


The Ghost in the Graphite

by Vulpesmellifera



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A Halloween 13, Artist Greg, Artist!Greg, Canon Compliant until it's Canon Defiant, Canon Divergence - The Reichenbach Fall, Detective Noir, Ghosts, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Medium Greg, Medium!Greg, Post-Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Sharing a Bed, There Is Only One Bed, Whump, casefic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:07:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 74,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27099325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulpesmellifera/pseuds/Vulpesmellifera
Summary: He's spent his life avoiding idleness with pencil and paper. It's unpredictable. A visitor could slide into his mind, animate his limbs, and attempt to communicate through sketching. They come to him for closure - or for justice.Greg Lestrade joined the police force to placate the ghosts that haunt him. After his greatest asset in solving crime flings himself off of a building, Greg is once again faced with too many sleepless nights. When a forceful spirit and a troubling case appear, there's a chance an innocent man could end up in prison. Out of desperation, Greg turns to the one person he thinks can help him: Mycroft Holmes.As attraction blooms between them, the case becomes far more twisted and dangerous than expected. The full moon approaches; time is running out.
Relationships: Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade
Comments: 471
Kudos: 239
Collections: A Halloween 13 2020





	1. Drawn-Out Death

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this fic was like being possessed - I wrote it during July Camp NaNoWriMo this year, and I could not ask for a better way to spend my hours. It is completely written. I will update with five chapters by Halloween, and then weekly from there.
> 
> Thank you so much to jae_blaze, who spent hours poring through this fic and swearing at me over discord. Thank you also to Saratonin for her beta help. TheSoupDragon has joined in to britpick, and she is amazing! It's such a gift to have people who are willing to read your words and tell you where you aced it and where you could do better. <3
> 
> I've never written casefic! So this was a challenge, and I loved every moment. I hope you enjoy it as well!

> And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
>  Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
> 
> -W.B. Yeats, _The Second Coming_

Scribbling, scrabbling, scratching. Lead sliding against paper and I’m gone again, lost in the movement: tight curves and sweeps of the wrist. The world around me slides from view, the voices of others mere whispers in the distance. When I come out of the fugue, I have to be fast. I have to catch up to the talk, if any is still happening.

Conversation is quiet. I stare down at the notepad. Staring back at me is the sketch of a heart-shaped pendant on a thin, delicate chain. I’ve never held it, but I know the weight of it, and I know it’s made of sterling silver and that it’s cold to the touch, but warms up next to the skin. 

She waits around the edges of my awareness. Nods approvingly. Doris Evans appeared in my dreams two nights ago, an older woman with a freckled face and a tight smile. She looks tired. Her eyes are shadowed like bruises and her bones are as fragile as a bird’s. So many of them come to me looking worse for wear. Too many victims of a difficult life as much as they are victims of a violent death. 

Ms Evans is also our latest murder case. My team has already picked the daughter’s boyfriend as the prime suspect, but can’t pin it on him: not enough evidence. He’s been questioned and let go.

I look again at the sketch. Even in pencil, you can see the glint of light on the metal. 

Sally shifts beside me.

“Detective Inspector Lestrade.” McGill’s voice punctures my thoughts. It’s edged with warning.

“Oh, sorry. Sir?” I say as my cheeks flush.

“So glad we have your attention,” he rumbles, but he’s smirking. “Have Donovan fill you in.” DCI Edmund McGill’s eyes are bloodshot - too many sleepless nights like my own. He reminds me of an old hound, with the jowls to match. Disappointment curls into my guts that I’ve let my attention wander while he was leading this meeting. He’s not a bad guy. He’s been speaking to the Independent Office for Police Conduct on my behalf ever since Sherlock fell, and I’d hate to let him down by getting distracted. 

The briefing room is quiet, but for the low snickers of a few cops in the back. I stare hard at the faux wood table, scuffed and worn from years of abuse, the carpet below it faded from the sunshine falling through the blinds. At each table sits several police officers and detectives, listening to McGill’s speech on our new policies regarding speaking with media personnel. Then he moved on to this case - the case of Doris Evans’ murder. I know he’s not trying to pick on me, but it is making me look foolish. 

These are my people, but in their eyes, I’ve been demoted, despite the fact that I just barely held onto my title in the wake of the consulting detective’s demise. I’ve been cleared in the subsequent investigation, but my reputation is stained. The red tape is unbelievable, and yeah, I’m being punished. Hence why we have what is a fairly simple case - definitely too simple for His Nibs - and it’s the Detective Chief Inspector giving us the latest briefing, while I sit here at the desk, twiddling my thumbs and looking chastened. 

And then I made the mistake of picking up a pencil without thinking about it. Too close at hand. Notepad on the table. Rookie mistake for me, honestly. 

I try to make up for the inattention. “Sir, I was thinking, she - uh, seemed like the kind of person to wear sentimental jewellery.”

DCI McGill meets my gaze with interest. “Why do you think that?”

“Call it a hunch.” This is why this gift is a bit more of a curse. When I had Sherlock, I could fill out the paperwork following his path of logic and deduction. Sometimes I spruced it up with my own “deductions,” the ones Sherlock didn’t know about, couldn’t know about unless he saw something that was incidentally connected to one of my visitations. I would just slip it into the report - “victim wore a necklace with a heart-shaped pendant, and the necklace was found in the suspect’s flat.”

“Hunches don’t make arrests, Lestrade.” At least he’s making an honest-to-god smile. I haven’t entirely worn out my welcome. 

“I think we need a warrant for the boyfriend’s flat,” I say. I’ve been losing sleep because of this case, and I need it solved. I need at least a few nights of rest between visitations, or I become a useless lump. I’ve been looking forward to closing this one. Doris is sad and anxious in my dreams. It’s not about her - she’s trying to protect someone. Someone she loves.

The daughter. Has to be, I think, as I stare at the heart-shaped pendant on the page.

I’ve got to talk to the daughter again. 

“Lestrade? Are you listening?” I look up just in time to see McGill slide his glasses on. I’m in for it now, but I can’t be arsed to care. I’m sure he’s reminding me that we can’t just go get a warrant willy-nilly.

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” I say, aware of the stares and scoffs around me. “I’ll be in your office later today.”

“You will,” he says with a tired, drawn-out sigh. “But not in my office. You’ll be seeing me right after this meeting.”

No one says anything. I nod my head and shift in the hard plastic of the chair. If I could do my life over, I might have chosen a different profession. Maybe a chef. Maybe join the circus.

No. I do what I do because I have to. 

McGill dismisses everyone after a few words of encouragement. He’s taken over and put my team to work how he wants. I missed that somehow, during my episode. I glance again at the sketch and tuck the notepad into the inside pocket of my jacket.

McGill wipes his glasses with a handkerchief. He puts them on and stares at me. “Lestrade, you got something on your mind?”

I lower my head. “Sorry, sir. I’ve been thinking a lot about this case. Got lost in thought.”

McGill exhales, his whole body rumpling with the push of air. “You need to help me help you. You can’t be lost in thought at these meetings in front of the others.”

I deflate. “You’re right, sir. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

He’s not quite done. “You’ve always been a good inspector, Lestrade, before you got involved with this ‘consulting detective.’ I want to see you succeed.”

“Yes, sir,” I say. “I promise you, I’ll do my damndest with every case.”

McGill stares at me, considering. His lower lip tightens against his top lip in an almost petulant pout. “I believe you. You’re one of the best ones, and I need you to get back into shape. Pronto.” He points to the door. “Or it’s the door. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. Get out of my sight. And solve this case.” A smile slides onto his face.

 _That wasn’t so bad,_ I think as I enter the hallway. The old DCI would have shouted and raged about me tuning out during a briefing until he was red in the face.

“Doodling, sir?” Sally asks as she meets me outside the door. The hall smells of shoe polish and pine cleaner. It tickles at my nose. 

“Yeah. Thinkin’. This meeting was a waste of time, wasn’t it?” I say to distract her. 

“I dunno. You think we can close this one? We got nothin’ on Tyler Bailey. The daughter is beside herself. Neighbours can’t place him there, and neither can CCTV. He’s a crook, for sure, but he’s small-time, and we got nothing that says he’s still dealing.”

“Yeah,” I say, running my tongue over my bottom lip. 

“What’re you thinking?” she asks. She knows me too well. It took some time after Sherlock died, but we’re starting to get our old rhythm back. It helps that Anderson took leave and Sally’s not hanging around that wet sod anymore. 

“I’m thinking we talk to the daughter again. I’ve got a question to ask her.”

“Right then, boss. Let’s do it.” Sally almost smiles. Her face is drawn, her brown skin a little paler than normal, her brows slide together. I know she regrets it. Everything that led to Sherlock’s death. It hangs over us like a graveyard gloom.

“Well, no more hangin' around. Let’s drive.” I give her a reassuring nod and stride toward the car park. She falls into step beside me, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, but her face screwed into a look of determination. 

* * *

“So, you’re telling me that if I search this flat, I won’t find your mother’s Tiffany necklace?” I say.

“No, you won’t,” the sour-faced, young woman answers. Emma Evans has straw-coloured hair that escapes the bun piled atop of her head. Her face is riddled with acne and she has the same tired, too-thin look that Doris Evans has when she visits me in my dreams. A small boy sits on the rug with a dog-eared book in front of him. His hair is dark and curly like his dad’s. 

Emma swears Tyler Bailey is at work, but whenever I mention him, I notice the boy’s shoulders draw in closer to his ears.

“Does Tyler scare you at all?” I whisper.

Emma stills. “What you mean by that?”

“You know if he’s arrested, he can’t hurt you, right?” I say. “He’d be in jail.”

Emma shakes her head in that fierce, denial-desperate motion that tugs at me. “No. Tyler doesn’t lay a finger on me or Abe. He wouldn’t. Not on purpose.” She slaps one hand over her eyes as her shoulders round in. Waterworks.

Sally steps forward. “We can help you,” she says.

“Police don’t care about us,” Emma says, her hand still over her face. She pulls it back down, tucks her hands beneath her crossed arms. “It don’t matter. I’ve asked for help before and no one took him then, why now?” She asks with red-rimmed, glistening eyes. 

I frown as I think about that call - a domestic. No one arrested. Wonder what the officers saw and how they decided upon their verdict. Emma doesn’t have obvious bruises, but the skittish, stiff-backed demeanour of the mother and the flinches of the little boy suggest something isn’t right. 

We’re standing just inside her door. The flat is a cramped one-bed in Hackney. The coffee table is scratched. The kitchenette floor is peeling lino. Water stains the ceiling and heavy curtains cover the windows. Hardly any children’s toys in sight: just a small pile of books and some cars mixed in with plastic dinosaurs. A child’s blanket and pillow are folded on the sofa. Crates are stacked into a corner with clothes piled in them. A ball sits on the top crate.

“If Tyler Bailey has a place, a stash, tell us,” I say. “Those other officers might not have helped you, but we will. And we’ll bring peace to your mother.”

She bites her lip. Looks at Abe, who keeps his head pointed down at the book. He hasn’t turned a page during this entire conversation. “His friends’ll know I snitched.” 

“He’s going away for murder, not for drugs,” Sally says. “We find this necklace in his things? He’s got some explaining to do, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she says, squeezing herself tighter. “Yeah. All right. It’s my mum, you know. I loved her. I loved her so much, but she told me - she told me Tyler was no good. I should have listened.” She bursts into tears. I have to stay still and watch. For just a second, I think Doris is beside me, watching this scene. It’s a tingling between the shoulder blades, a change in the pressure of the air around us. 

“Your mother knew that,” I say. “She loved you anyway. You can help bring her murderer to justice, and earn some peace yourself.”

Emma uses her sleeves to wipe away her tears. “I can’t believe he did it. I can’t. It’s too much.”

I know he’s done it. I just have to prove it. And now a desperate feeling crawls into my throat as I watch this poor woman, hardly more than twenty, struggle to reconcile different truths inside her. “Help us to help you, Emma.”

Emma scrubs at her face. Releases a long sigh, and a short sniffle. “He’s got a locker. It’s under my name, but he uses it. At the bus station.”

“If it’s in your name,” Sally says, “and you give us permission, we don’t even need a warrant. Just give us the code, all right?”

“Yeah,” she says. “It’s my birthday month and year. 0-3-9-8.”

Sally nods. “Okay. Good. Thank you, Emma.”

Emma’s tears have subsided, and she holds herself still again, her eyes staring, unfocused, at the wall. 

“Take care of that little boy, Emma. We find this necklace, and Tyler goes away for a very long time,” I say.

Emma nods, slowly. Sally passes her a card. “Call us, please, if you think of anything else. We’ll be in touch with you, of course. But do call us if you need us,” she says firmly.

Emma takes the card, all her motions slow like molasses, perfunctory. 

“Emma, is there someone we can call for you?” I ask. I know she’s employed at a pub, but I wonder if Tyler Bailey’s hustling on the side has helped her to keep a roof over her and her son’s head.

She shakes her head no, not looking at either of us.

We leave.

The neighbourhood is shit. But I know it well, having grown up in one like it. Despite the flower-print curtains my nan sewed and put up, and despite the sage-smudging and the incense burning, the neighbourhood was still shit. Da had a fancy office job that got me and him out of there when I was twelve, but I still remember it well - the chain-link fences, the weeds sprouting from crooked cracks, the litter at the kerb. I managed to avoid the roving gangs of older boys who ruled the streets from midday to midnight, but I’d had to be quick or be tough. Nan wasn’t always there to yell at them from the doorstep - and my god, did she have a set of lungs on her. When she stepped out those same boys straightened up and it was all “Yes, missus,” and “No, missus,” and they would slink back to whatever alleyway or corner they’d made their hangout that year.

After her death, they got braver.

Sally says nothing as we get back in the car.

“I’ll be glad to get this arsehole off the streets,” she says as she buckles her seatbelt. “Should we call the services?”

“I was thinkin’ Kelly,” I say. “She’s discreet, and she’s kind.”

“Yeah, good choice,” Sally says.

“Good work in there, with her,” I rake my throat to get the words. They're rusty with disuse.

“Thanks,” Sally says, almost in surprise. It’s been a while since I’ve praised her for anything, and while part of me feels she deserved a cold shoulder, I’ve been letting go of the anger. Working on it, anyway. It doesn’t help our team if I hold a grudge, and it doesn’t help victims if teams have too much friction. 

“I just can’t believe you had such an outlandish hunch, and it worked,” Sally says. She turns to face me. “I mean, it was like something out of his work.” I know by ‘his,’ she means Sherlock. 

“Sherlock woulda done it faster,” I say, not really thinking.

A strained look passes over Sally’s face.

“That’s not what I meant,” I say. “It wasn’t a dig.”

“Yeah. It wasn’t,” she says. She’s thinner than she used to be. Angrier, sometimes. Like me. I know the guilt still eats at her. 

I don’t start the car yet. “Sal. We talked about this. Sometimes, he’s going to come up, yeah? It’s not...I’m not holding it against you.”

She bites her lip and averts her eyes. “Maybe you should, though.”

“You did what you thought was the right thing.”

“I was wrong, though, and I’ll never be as good as him, will I?”

I huff. “Yeah, but that goes for all of us, doesn’t it?”

“It...I wish…”

“None of it happened, right?”

“I was just so sure -”

“We’ve been over this. It was a mistake. We all make them.”

“But my mistake killed someone,” she says. “Made someone kill themself.”

“It wasn’t just you.” We don’t say anything about Phil Anderson anymore. I’m not even sure what he’s up to. 

“I saw on Facebook that he’s getting divorced,” she says as if she’d read my mind.

“Oh.” 

“Yeah.” She hugs herself tighter. It’s a habit she doesn’t even seem aware of. Like Emma. Everyone’s trying to protect themselves from something, and sometimes it’s just ourselves.

“Listen, drop those arms, and push back those shoulders. Head high, yeah? We have a job to do, and as much as Sherlock liked to make us all feel useless and stupid, we actually aren’t. We have a pretty good team. You and I make a good team. So, let’s go out there and do it. Be that good team.” I turn the key in the ignition and listen as the car groans to life. “Look, we’ll get the bad guy at the end of the day, and Sherlock had nothing to do with it.”

Her arms slide to her sides as a smile tugs at her mouth. “Let’s go get him, boss.”

“That’s the spirit,” I say, and we head out to find the little piece of evidence that will lead to the arrest of Doris Evans’ murderer. 

* * *

I sag onto the bed of my one-bedroom flat. Cass got the marriage bed in the divorce - I didn’t want it, thinking of what she might have done in it with her lover, or lovers. This bed I’m melting into is one I bought recently, and it’s the most comfortable and posh thing I own. I long for it at the end of each day, always hoping I might escape any visions from the murdered dead. I know I definitely will escape a vision tonight since the case is closed. 

It’s the pattern: dreams when asleep, sketches during waking hours. My Grandnan called it automatic drawing. I get a little reprieve between visitations. I work hard to get these cases resolved, not just out of a sense of justice, but to preserve my sanity. Once I wake from one spectre’s nightmare, it’s hell to try and go back to sleep. It isn’t a good look for me if the case drags out. 

Sherlock - god, Sherlock. I never got such great sleep in my life as when he helped to solve our cases. It made my sleep and my life...manageable. I even tried to reconcile with Cass, though that was doomed. 

But fuck it, we solved the case today, and so tonight, I can sleep. The relief is like a warm massage over my body.

We found the pendant in the locker and sent officers immediately to Tyler Bailey’s workplace - a deli in Hackney. Or, more like, the alleyway outside a deli in Hackney. Selling drugs, of course. We got him for possession and sat him down in a room for questioning.

Once I showed him the pendant, the chain still stained with the blood of Doris Evans, he cracked. Said something about the old lady laying into him for his ‘alleged’ treatment of her daughter. I think of him now: scrubby hair, wrinkle between his eyebrows, ugly sneer on his lips. A gap in his front teeth. Trying to convince us that his shoving her was an accident when she attacked him, that she fell and hit her head on the corner of the counter. The thing is, she was hit a second time while she was down, and that was the killing blow. 

A detail hit me later as we were preparing the paperwork. When we stood in the flat of Doris Evans and eyed her photos on the wall - all cheap frames with the kind of photos you get from disposable cameras - any picture of her depicted the necklace around her neck. The most unlikely and expensive thing she owned, and we totally missed it. Didn’t even ask why it wasn’t on her body or among her things. 

Sherlock wouldn’t have missed that. 

The constables ransacked Bailey’s flat after we got the warrant, and found the murder weapon: a gun. Or rather, the butt of it. Now I have to wonder if Bailey pulled the gun on her first and if Doris tried to fight him off and fell into the worktop, or if she was pushed into the worktop. It’s all too hellish to think about, and I just hope, fervently hope, that she’s at peace now. Wherever it is the dead go after bothering me to solve their case. Sometimes I see them again. Like they’re thanking me. Sometimes the visitations just stop. It’s safe for me to sit with a writing implement in hand and some nearby paper. I can do the paperwork for the case without losing myself to a visitor.

Like I said, my Grandnan called it “automatic drawing.” It’s why I don’t let my hands sit idle with pens or pencils. I keep my notepad in my pocket and other papers in stacks just out of reach. It isn’t safe to have them out in a place where my mind can wander, and a spirit can move in. 

“If the spirit moves you,” she’d say, pushing paper and crayons toward me with a shine in her eyes. 

And they do. They move me, and I find myself sitting there moments later with little memory of having pushed a drawing implement across paper. When the case is solved, I get anywhere from a few nights to a handful of weeks of dreamless sleep. It’s a glorious respite. 

I’d prefer it if I were normal. Grandnan said I was like Orpheus visiting the dead. He traveled to the Underworld to try and rescue his dead wife, Eurydice. He played music for Hades and Persephone, moved them to almost granting his request. He had to walk back up to the mortal world with Eurydice at his back. He had to trust the gods on their word that it was Eurydice who followed him all the way, and once they were both on mortal ground, he could turn around to see her. The idiot walked into the sun and turned to see his wife before she could walk into the sun, and so she was lost to him forever.

When I was older and Grandnan was dead, I learnt the gods punished Orpheus for being cowardly - he didn’t love Eurydice enough to be willing to die for her and join her in the Underworld. Instead, he sought to prove he was more clever than the gods, thinking he could move them with his music so well that they’d heed his pleas. He was punished by losing his wife, and eventually, by being torn apart by the worshippers of Dionysus. Intoxicated, frenzied women called Maenads.

Dionysus - another god of death and renewal, when a person looks into the heart of it. 

It’s nothing like my experience. I meet the dead in my dreams - an in-between place where the dead and the living can congregate. The drawings are...worse. Having someone else in your head is frightening. But it’s been decades now, and I’ve done my best to accept it. To roll with the punches.

Or maybe I just don’t let myself dwell on it.

Maybe Nan knew one day I’d become an inspector. One day, I would meet with the dead again and again, to bring them justice. They could never come back out into the sunlight, but maybe, just maybe, I could bring them some rest if I solved their murders, or protected their loved ones. 

I rub my hands through my hair. I’ve gone too long without a haircut and the grey spikes are becoming near unmanageable. A swipe over my chin confirms a layer of stubble that’s in desperate need of a shave. I flop back on the bed and manoeuvre my heavy head onto the pillow. It can all wait until morning. I deserve this rest. Tension slides away from my body like the ebbing of a tide over cool, slick sand. My mind drifts under the waves of sleep.

* * *

The first thing I hear is the mewling cry of a baby. Heartbreaking, nerve-wracking, and small, before reaching a high squall. Everything is dark, thick, and smoke stings my eyes. Coughing tears through my lungs in a painful burn. I fumble through the dark on my knees, scrabble over the wreckage of brick and plaster. The sting of a cut registers on one knee, as I try to peer through the dark.

Then I see her, despite the blur of tears in my eyes. She’s tall, model-thin, with a sad face and even sadder eyes. Her sleek brown hair whips around her as the heat in the air billows. Her clothes are stylish, long maxi-dress, pointed flats, long pendant necklace, and dangly earrings. Bracelets line her wrists, and the glint of a charm grabs my attention. An American flag. Her mouth is wide, in a flat line, her eyes dark, glimmering with tears. 

The baby’s cries get louder.

“Who are you?” I call, though the rush of hot air and the rip of cracking plaster drown my words. She watches. She seems almost as surprised to see me as I am to see her. She takes a step toward me as her clothes catch fire, licking up her long limbs and touching her face.

The ground opens up, a gaping maw of darkness, an abyss to nowhere. Brick and mortar tumble into the crevasse. I almost expect the chariot of Hades to rise from the pitch-black shadows and snatch the girl in flames to carry her down into the belly of the Underworld.

No one grabs her, but she falls - and the ground gives out beneath me. 

My stomach swoops and panic flashes through me as I fall, float - no longer grounded, no longer me, no longer of me - _I’m not even..._

I wake.

_This shouldn’t be happening. It can’t be happening. It’s too soon._

My fingers itch for a pencil while the dream lingers at the edges of my memory. The last thing I want to do is cater to a spirit - it shouldn’t happen so soon. 

But if I don’t - if I don’t -

I shudder to think of being pushed out and controlled. Like I’m not even there.

 _He’ll float away._ She’d said that. Nan. She’d said that if I didn’t learn to control it, I could float away. Lost forever.

“Shit,” I say. I roll over to stare at the ceiling. “Shit.”


	2. Icons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The playlist which helped to facilitate the writing of this story can be found on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5yn3rlZlmZu5wHkzL6DxIs).

DCI McGill gave me a hearty congratulations on the solve. Tyler Bailey was charged with murder mere hours after the meeting wherein I brought up my question about sentimental jewellery worn by Doris Evans. No one else has said anything to me about it. In some ways, that suits. I don’t need anyone looking at me closely, trying to figure out how my hunches can be so spot on.

They’re not always. Most of the messages visitors give me are jumbled. Symbols, everyday items. Points like constellations: string them together and then look at it, just trying to figure out what the hell the picture is supposed to be. Like how do you get a bull out of Taurus? 

The thing is, not all the ghosts get their cases solved in the official procedure. Sometimes, I have to take on a little vigilantism to find their rest so I can find mine. 

And now, I’ve got a fuckin’ new one. Already. This never happens. I’m at a loss. It breaks the pattern, and I’ve been in a daze for most of the morning over it. It was a strong vision, too. The pain in my knee felt real, and my lungs felt choked with smoke. The fall into a dark forever. It’s like I was dumped right into the middle of the crime scene as it was happening. 

And I always get some rest between visitors. Clients, I sometimes call them. I prefer to think of them that way, rather than the undead or phantasms, or something that could shove my spirit right out of my body if it felt so inclined. I prefer to do what they require of me as quickly and quietly as possible, and keep them moving on. 

Tristan’s the one that got me into this line of work, not on purpose, though. We were best mates as teens. Skipping school, engaging in illegal activities, sneaking into clubs and punk concerts. It was a welcome oblivion - when you had dead people knocking about in your dreams and making it such that holding a pencil becomes impossible in school, it’s just easier to sink right into that delinquent attitude and revel - or rebel - in the highs and lows of counterculture. 

Until Tristan died. Got knifed by some thug high off his rocks. I didn’t even know he was dead - he just appeared in my dreams, his Clash t-shirt bloodied and his face grey. The next morning the horrible news was spreading - he’d been found in the alley two streets over from one of our favourite hangouts. 

I sent an anonymous tip to the police when I dreamt of his attacker’s shoes. I recognised them. Joe Hallet, a junkie and a bully. Hallet was never arrested. But Tristan seemed to understand that I’d tried. In the parting dream - the last time he ever visited - he held me as I cried. And then he faded away. Brought closure, perhaps, but never justice.

So I decided to do the work myself. 

It’s worked. It’s worked for years. But this new visitor. Client. Not a night’s rest between her and Doris.

“What’ve we got today?” I ask Sally when she pops into my office, wearing a smart suit and short heels that barely make a noise on the tile floor. 

“Report’s on your desk if you look,” she says. She hands me a coffee cup. “Fire happened last night. Response was quick, got it under control. Body found inside this morning. Arson investigator is on the premises now. Leaning towards arson already, by the way. The body’s going to be moved to Barts. We need to figure out whether or not it’s a murder.”

“Got it,” I say, hoping she doesn’t notice the edge in my voice. At ‘fire,’ my stomach went cold. The image of the sad girl with the long hair floats before my eyes. Burning rubble and the caterwaul of an infant. Falling, falling, falling.

I clear my throat, take a sip of coffee, and place it carefully, slowly, onto the desk. I open the manila folder. Warehouse in Lambeth. Burned partially to the ground. Body found later this morning. Everything as Sally says. My hands start to tremble but I put the manila folder down with a deliberate motion and swing my eyes up to meet hers. “I suppose we’ll need to give the pathologist some time before we head over there ourselves. Let’s finish up that paperwork on Bailey, right?”

“Yeah,” she says, and heads out the door.

I wait a moment before my stomach settles.

* * *

Every time I come here, I pause by the spot where Sherlock hit the pavement. I can’t help it, I’m drawn to it like a confused moth to a halogen light. His blood stain lingered for a few days after the fall. Specialists came out to clean it - right disturbing outside a hospital, of course. I look at the spot. I search the nearby crowd for his face. I look up to the rooftop ledge, thinking about what he must have been feeling when he jumped. I would have sworn Moriarty pushed him over. Sherlock never seemed the type - but then, they never do, do they? If it wasn’t for John’s phone call; John saying he saw it with his own eyes. The crowd that gathered and saw him jump. If it weren’t for those eyewitness statements, I would have never believed it. I hope and hope, by standing around the place where he died, he might visit me. Maybe somehow I’d grab his notice.

The people I want to visit me never do, though.

A chilly wind nips at my ears and encourages me to move on. It’s getting on for late October, and the sun is already headed for the horizon as the shadows stretch tall in the streets. I step over the spot and make my way to the main entrance of Barts. I’ve done this walk plenty of times. I’ve even walked the rooftop. I’ve laid in bed hoping for a dream where Sherlock visits me. I figured if anyone would figure out how to do it in the afterlife, it would be the great detective. 

Nothing. 

I make my way down to the morgue to see Molly. She’s never been quite the same since his fall, either. I know she had it bad for him. Like a puppy desperate for attention. I’ll never understand what she saw in him, but she deserves someone who can appreciate her, and treat her well. 

She smiles when she sees me. Too wide. Like a car salesman. Less oily but every bit as fake. 

“Hey, Molls,” I say. We’ve been friends, or at least friendly, for a long time. She’s startlingly intelligent. I wish I’d gotten to know her better before Sherlock fell.

“Hi, Greg,” she says. Then clutches a clipboard to her chest and clears her throat, her mouse-brown eyes rounding the room. “Suppose you’re here about the burn victim.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say. I follow her through the doors. The morgue is the same as it ever was - breeze block walls covered in institutional white paint. Medical instruments, tables, Molly’s paper-stacked desk with a computer. The smell of formalin and chemical cleaners hang in the air. I enter the autopsy suite to see a body lying on the steel table, draped with a white sheet. I’ve seen the photos of the damage, but the stench of burnt flesh is thick, acrid, like charred vomit. I swallow it down and try not to inhale too deeply. 

It reminds me of my dream; the thick smoke and the smell of burning petroleum. 

“So, what have you got for me?” I say, and reach into my pocket for some Vick’s. I apply it to my upper lip, letting the clinging smell of camphor and eucalyptus invade my nose.

“Hm.” She makes a throat-clearing sound. “Burn victim is female, I’d say young, twenties. Caucasian. Trauma to the skull from a blunt object.” She lays the sheet back, and I take a glance at the burnt face. I already know it’s her, so I don’t take in too many of the details. It’s harder to look at their dead bodies when you’ve seen them alive in your dreams, for some reason. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.

“Anything you can tell me about the wound?”

Molly licks her lips in a nervous tick. Why is she so nervous? It surrounds her, sticks to her like a viscous liquid, a slime trail left behind by a snail. “A brick, maybe? Still working out the details.”

_Fuck._

The whole business twists like a blade between organs. I need to find out who she was, and who killed her, not just because it’s my job, but because it’s all so _wrong._ This case gives me the creeps. I can’t tell why aside from the unusual bit about her showing up so quickly after another case.

“Any chance of identification?”

“No purse. No keys. No wedding band, no dog tags, nothing but a couple of pieces of ornamental jewellery.” She lifts her shoulders, still clutching that clipboard. I watch as her knuckles go white.

“Hey, how are you doing?” I ask gently.

“Hm? Me?” Her voice is like the chirp of a frightened bird. “I’m fine. Really. I’ve - got my work. Everything is fine.” She covers the body with the sheet.

“Yeah? I mean...I know it’s only been a few months since…”

“Really, Greg,” she says. Her voice is a bit more normal now, more like the voice of the Molly Hooper I know. Excitable, but level when she’s being serious. Somber. “I’m fine. How are you? I mean, you look like you’ve been losing sleep.” Her cringe is obvious at her words. It’s kind of a relief that she’s still awkward.

“Yeah, you’re right. I could use more sleep.” I notice a pen in Molly’s hand. I’ve been avoiding pens and pencils all morning. I get the feeling this spirit is going to rush in the moment I pick one up. I rub the back of my neck as I stare at the draped figure. For just a second, I imagine the burn vic sitting up, the sheet falling from her head, the blistered flesh and one eye staring at me -

“Greg? Hello?”

I blink the image away. “Yeah, sorry?”

“I...look, do you want to get coffee sometime?”

_As Sherlock’s seconds? Or just friends?_

She’s never really given me a look, though.

Her face flushes bright crimson. “I mean, just a friendly coffee. We never - talk, anymore.”

“Oh. Yeah. That’d be nice. Let’s do that sometime.”

She smiles, and there’s Molly. I knew she was in there somewhere. Shiny eyes and perky smile. 

I know grief never really leaves, but it does abate. It does find its place on the shelf and settle, to be taken out again at a moment when it’s more appropriate. Until then it’s like a wild guest in your house that you can’t kick out. It’ll set fire to the curtains if you’re not watchful. 

“I better go see what Sally has from the constables.” We’d sent them out to canvas the neighbourhood. It’s not likely anyone saw anything, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed.

“Oh. Um, tell Sally I said hi.” Her cheeks colour again.

“Will do. Take care of yourself, Molly.”

“You too,” she says. The smile on her face seems forced. Disquiet rumbles in my chest as I leave, but fuck, I am too exhausted to decipher the oscillating moods of Molly Hooper.

As I leave Barts, I glance one last time at the spot. I sometimes look at Tristan and Sherlock as the two bookends on the strangeness of my life - one who showed me a pathway to living with this ability, and the other who made that path a little easier. It hurts to realise they’re both gone. 

I’m on my own.

* * *

“Missing persons hasn’t come back with anything?” Sally asks from the doorway. She’s got a new haircut, a pretty bob with her dark ringlets bouncing. It enhances the jut of her chin and the fullness of her lips. Anderson was never good enough for her - not just for her looks, but she’s got smarts and guts, too.

“Nah, not a thing that matches our vic.” My hand reaches across the desk for a pen. When I realize what I’m doing, I halt and wrap my hands around the arms of the chair. “Unless she might be this girl from Liverpool? Went missing last week. Dental records are being checked now. But my gut tells me it isn’t her. Nice haircut, by the way.” The dream I had last night told me. Our girl isn’t English. She’s American. I can still see that charm hanging off a bangle on her wrist. 

At least, I think it was telling me that she’s an American. It’s not always clear what symbols and objects mean.

“Thanks,” she says. “Needed something new. I called Technical, by the way. Got nothing of use on CCTV so far. Not a lot of cameras in that area. Cargo vans are in and out. Bin lorry. No sight of a young woman at any driver’s wheels. No pedestrians around that time of night. Arson inspector thinks the fire started between 11 and midnight. Accelerant used was petrol. Whoever did the job definitely wanted it noticed, if you ask him. Didn’t seem to be trying to hide a body so much as destroy as much evidence as possible.”

“Jesus Christ,” I say as I rub my hands over my eyes. Shapes and shadows bloom like slow-moving fireworks beneath my lids. “Okay, so we got a body of a young woman, burned beyond recognition, and no murder weapon, and no footage. Wait, a bin lorry at that time of night?”

“We got the numberplate. Called the company. Seems their driver was returning the lorry after picking it up from a repair shop. He was supposed to have it there sooner but he stopped at a pub and says things got late. No history of priors. Clean driving record.” 

“Hm. Anything from the constables?”

“No one was very active in the area that night. Far as I can tell, the bin lorry was passing through, the vans belong to some junk shop that keeps storage out there. Moving merchandise they said, and saw nothing suspicious.”

“Great.” I slap my hands on the desk. Tap my fingers. Avoid thinking about the pen. Almost.

The phone rings.

“Lestrade,” I say as I pick up.

“Hey, Greg.” It’s Molly. This is about the burn vic. If it was about the coffee, Molly would have texted me. 

“Hey, Molly,” I say with a glance at Sally. “What have you got for me?”

“I can say definitively that the head wound was great enough to have knocked her out, but she actually died of asphyxiation.”

I suck in my lips. “Mm.” I open my mouth to say, “Okay, so she died from smoke inhalation. Still alive after someone knocked her on the head. Still think it was a brick?”

“It was something with an edge. I’d say a brick would fit the bill.”

“Got it. Thanks, Molls.”

“You’re welcome,” and she says it happily, brightly, like the praise I’ve handed her was what she’d been looking forward to in this entire conversation. 

“Take care,” I say and hang up.

Sally raises her brows. “She might have still been alive when the fire started?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Head trauma didn’t kill her, unfortunately.”

“Hm. Okay, well we’ve still gotta figure out who she was.”

“Yeah. And what she was doing there that time of night.”

“Think she was a pro?”

“With those clothes?” Not according to my dreams; this bird was a fashion maven. She could be a high-priced escort, but that didn’t ring true to me. “What was left of ‘em anyway. I think she had money. Or maybe a boyfriend with money or parents with money.” I wish she would tell me more in the dreams. I wish they all would.

Sally presses two fingers to her chin as her eyes glaze over, trained on the wall behind me. 

“What are you thinking?” I ask after a moment.

“Kind of wishing I had taken that holiday after all.” Her eyes focus again and she smirks at me.

“Go on, get out of here and do your job,” I say with a grin. For a second, it feels like old times. 

* * *

Red-orange blooms like flowers against a dark sky. The petals fall away. A curtain of black smoke, the smell of burning plastic and rubber, choking, choking, _choking…_

The baby cries.

_Someone get the baby._

No baby in sight. 

Her face comes again, her body trim, slender. Waist fit. One hand over her heart. She’s wearing earbuds, which I didn’t see before. A ring shines on her right finger like the sun, like rays bursting forth and then everything is on fire. Consumed by flame, her limbs long and distended, her hand moves from her heart to her face and she weeps, she _weeps._

The heat licks my skin as I stare. I reach forward to pull her out from the crumbling brick.

The building falls into a swirl of sparks, smoke, and flame. The spinning blackness above is a whirlpool of birds: crows. Raucous cawing reaches my ears over the roar of the fire and the thin wails of the baby. The cawing morphs into a low, throaty chanting, like a hellbeast will emerge at any second from the flames, called forth by the repeated calls of the black birds. 

When I wake, it’s in a cold sweat, fear playing up and down my spine like the eerie scales of a harpsichord. No dreams have ever been like these last two. I turn on the bedside lamp and glance around. I’m in my room; I’m safe. The urge to draw pounds at me, like hammering on the side of the flat. 

Fear fills my throat with bile. I can’t - not yet. Not just yet. This time, it’s different. It’s all different, and I’m afraid allowing the sketching session to happen will be too much. 

“Not yet,” I say, wondering if the presence lingers still in my room. Can she hear me? “I’m not yours to command.”

* * *

It’s going on 5 am and the coffee shop down the road from my flat is opening. I’m through the door and getting myself a drink first thing, already showered and dressed for the day. The proprietor, Pete, is a good guy who knows about my restless habits and doesn’t press me on it. Just pushes the hot paper cup into my hand and tells me he’s got the papers in already and points me to the corner. Sometimes I read them. Sometimes I sit at the table by the window and stare out onto the street. Watch as London comes awake. 

I sit at my table and prepare to hunker down and “percolate.” Just means I’ll mull through what the dreams have shown me, what little clues we have until I get frustrated, and then I’ll distract myself by focusing on other cases, or reading the paper. 

This time, though, an image snags my attention on the cover of The Sun. It’s some heiress named Tansy Winters and the headline is calling her out on her so-called “Party Girl” behavior. The young woman’s been caught in some pap photo with a coffee in one hand and a tiny dog on a lead in the other. She’s got giant white-framed shades on, and her bleach-blonde hair falls to her elbows in waves. The title is claiming she’s broken it off with some musician, and has since been seen out late, binge-drinking, and generally wreaking havoc on her life with terrible decisions. No doubt they’ve got some “anonymous source” that’ll “tell-all” about the end of their relationship and Tansy’s subsequent bender.

But that’s not what’s caught my attention.

It’s the girl beside her, also carrying a coffee cup. No dog. Tall, thin, beautiful face half-hidden by dark shades. Long, pin-straight brown hair gleaming in the sun. Tanned, healthy skin. 

It’s her. 

I snatch up the gossip rag and turn to the right page. I skim to the photo credit: Tansy Winters seen walking her dog with party girl Victoria Rivera.

Victoria Rivera.

I have a name.


	3. Dreaming the Dark

I spent part of the morning on my phone searching for anything I could find on Victoria Rivera. As far as I can tell, she’s been seen in a lot of photos with Tansy Winters, and some photos with Michael Haverly, lead guitarist for the indie band Last Heartbeat. It seems as if the band has been around forever - a band I listened to in my twenties, and get surprised every time they release a new single now that I’m in my forties. I saw them plenty with Cassandra when we were dating, and again after we were married. They were her favourite band, and she had such a thing for lead singer Jules Mathison. Gorgeous guy, for sure, though a bit too young for me. I must have a decade on him. And he puts forth this choir boy image about him that seemed a bit too good to be true. In church with his wife every Sunday type, never drinks, never smokes, never does drugs. I’m not sure how you can party with that sort. 

But maybe some of us need the blitz in order to feel good, to feel right again. The buzz of nicotine or alcohol. Bad choices and awkward mornings. Cass and I did plenty of that. Though I did worse with Tristan. Tristan was drugs and vandalism and other shit I only half-remember. Cass was all drinks and smokes and 2 am arguments on someone’s balcony. 

And from my internet findings, Tansy Winters is the type to do the latter. Victoria Rivera might have been dating Michael Haverly, but she was definitely getting off-her-tits with Ms Winters, loudly and often. 

Often. Often enough, that I have to wonder why Tansy Winters hasn’t filed a missing persons report on someone who seems to be her best friend. In fact, no one has, as I’ve called into Missing Persons, and we still’ve only got the one missing girl from Liverpool who I know is not going to be our victim. Her dental records should arrive today for Molly to compare to the crispy body lying in the morgue. 

One thing I know for sure: when a person starts showing up in my dreams and in my drawings, they’re dead. I’m not clairvoyant. I’m not some seer or Delphic oracle. I can’t prophesy. Once they come to me, they’re already dead, and the only thing left to do is bring them closure. Doris wanted her family protected, so I did it. Victoria has been murdered, and so I’m going to bring her justice. 

Now I just have to prove she’s missing and connect her to our case.

I can’t run her through the computer here because that’ll leave a record - and how do I explain that?

But there’s Tansy Winters.

* * *

I spend about four hours outside of Tansy’s flat before she finally emerges, buttery-cream coloured papillon on the end of a fluorescent yellow lead. Tansy’s wearing stilettos and tight dungarees, smoking a fag, tottering about the pavement as her doggie does its business. She wears shades and her blonde hair is yanked into a messy topknot. 

“Got a light, miss?” I say, giving her a cheeky grin. I’ve found it can work in a lot of situations with women, and some men.

She peers over her shades at me. Big blue eyes framed by thick, mascara-saturated lashes. “Sure,” she says. “You police?”

I hold my cigarette to my lips. “Detective Inspector. What gave it away?”

Her eyes sweep my frame. I’ve got on my usual grey trench coat on and an off-the-peg suit, not my best one, but suitable for work. 

“You got that look about you.” She holds the lighter up to my cigarette.

“Thanks,” I say as I draw air into my lungs. I breathe the smoke out and it curls in the air between us. A nudge at my ankle draws my attention. I’m met with the dark-eyed stare of the little butterfly-eared dog. “Cute dog. What’s his name?”

“Beaver,” she says, a slight pull at the corner of her lips.

I can feel my eyes pop as I bark a laugh. “Not what I expected. Different.”

She ducks her chin a bit as she releases a soft chuckle. “As a pup, she chewed a lot. I had to get new shoes, and then she started on the furniture. Wooden table legs and chairs. Like a beaver.” She takes another drag of her cigarette, smiling.

I can’t play it any longer. It’s time to let her know why I’m here. “Tansy, have you seen your friend Victoria lately?”

Her skin pales to ghost white. Her whole body stiffens and she drops her cigarette. “What - what the fuck?” She rubs her hand against her thigh and dives down to the pavement to retrieve her cigarette. “So you know who I am, do you?” She’s pissed off. Shaking.

I keep calm. “I’m just wondering why no one’s reported her missing, that’s all.”

“And you think I would know because?” She throws her cigarette back on the ground and rubs it out with the fine point of her heel. “I don’t keep tabs on her every day you know, I’m not her mum.” 

She glances around her. Holds the dog’s lead with both hands. “Listen, if Victoria is in some kind of trouble, I want nothing to do with it. I’m trying to live my life right, now. I’ve joined AA and I’ve got a benefit to put on, and I’m going to keep my head down and out of trouble.”

I can tell she’s glaring at me through her sunglasses. “Who sent you anyway?” she says.

I shrug, and with a nonchalant wave of my hand, say, “The Met.”

“Mm. Well, I don’t have to answer any of your questions. I haven’t seen Victoria in days and we don’t talk every day. So leave me alone.” She pulls the dog with her towards the door of her building, her hands white-knuckled and trembling around the lead.

* * *

The odour of a bacon sarnie hasn’t even left my office when Sally pokes her head in. “Hey, missed you this morning.”

“Had an errand to run,” I say. “Got anything for me on our burn vic?”

“Nothing’s turned up on CCTV. Missing persons have still got the same number of missing persons that potentially match our vic. The results on that came back from the morgue; no match.”

“That was fast,” I say, and open my computer to my email. “Love it when she works fast.”

“I’d say it had something to do with you,” Sally says with a bit of suggestion in her voice.

“Nope. It’s not like that.”

“Didn’t you used to have a thing for her?” Sally asks.

“I always thought she was cute, but I came second to Sherlock in solving cases, you think I want that in my love life, too?” Molly was always a bit too shy for me, anyway. I’ve always preferred the types who can walk into a room and own it. Men or women. Cass was like an unstoppable force, a whirlwind of blaring smiles and a pied piper of fun. She was the sun, and drew everyone to her orbit. 

No wonder the blokes all liked her so well. I understood the appeal. I married her, after all.

I ring up Molly up as soon as Sally leaves. “Hey, got a question for you. You mentioned the vic had jewellery on her, yeah?” 

“Yes, um.” Paper is being moved around on her end, then a bang, as if something hit the floor. “Oh, oops. Wait a sec.” More muffled movement. “Okay, yeah. A gold necklace that didn’t melt too badly - in the shape of a ‘V.’” My stomach curdles. “And a diamond ring, on the ring finger of her right hand. Like an engagement style ring, but wrong hand. Unless she was from Germany, perhaps?”

“Hm,” I say. “Thanks. You got photos of that to send over?” We talk a moment more about a different case - manslaughter, it looks like, and hang up.

Ring on the right hand. Only one other person I know who wears a wedding band on the right hand, and I’ve always wondered over the significance of it. Sherlock’s elder brother, Mycroft Holmes. He’s a bit of an uptight, posh type with a kind of magnetism that gets me going. And, oh god, his sense of humour. Dry, well-timed, and well-aimed. If he weren’t so out of my league, and frankly, a bit eccentric, I would have asked him out for a drink as soon as Cass and I were over. I thought it might lead to that; I thought he and I were reaching an understanding, getting on the same page. Flirting, spending more and more time together. Jokes and innuendo. Drinks and late nights. 

The last time I saw him, I could tell something weighed on him. Something scared him. He was usually so in control, so collected. But his jacket was off and his shirtsleeves were rolled up, and I could tell he’d just run his fingers through his hair - the curls were mussed. I didn’t press him on it - just asked if everything was okay and if there was anything I could do. He said the roles would play out as they were meant to. It was cryptic, at the time.

And then Moriarty and Sherlock happened. The last time I saw Mycroft was when Sherlock died. When I think of it, my heart pinches, rounds in on itself in my chest. Not just out of grief, but because I think of Mycroft, who spent so much of his time ensuring Sherlock’s safety. The two of them had the same scary intelligence, with eyes that saw the shape of everything. Somehow, Mycroft wasn’t able to protect Sherlock from his fall, and I know that he must chastise himself for it at every opportunity.

I sent him a message at the time with my apologies and condolences, but I’m sure I was the last person he wanted to see, being as I was part of the operation to arrest Sherlock. I can’t let myself dwell on it - it’s over now. Mycroft is the one who not only got away, but everything got so fucked up between us that I basically shoved him out the door. How can he flirt with the bloke who helped to drive his little brother to suicide?

My email pings - probably Molly sending the photos over. I still don’t know how to get anyone to connect the body to Victoria Rivera. Sherlock could probably do it. 

I could always go my old route of calling in an anonymous tip. That’s helped me in the past when I’m stuck. But if I did that every time, someone might take notice that my cases get an inordinate amount of them. I’ll wait another day or two to call. Someone might still make that report. 

I open Molly’s email. A gold necklace in the shape of a V stares back at me.

* * *

I’m there again. The building looms over me. I don’t have to see it. I can feel it. I know it’s there. Terror slides through me like a spear when I hear the chanting of low voices. Shadows move. Birds fly overhead coating the night sky with flapping wings and sharp beaks. 

A baby cries. 

She runs.

I’m inside the building now and the fire’s begun. Chanting swells into the open air, garbled, like another language - could be Latin, could be Greek. I can’t make out the words. The thin wail of an infant in distress rings in my ears. 

The wood cracks. The heat builds.

I see her now, lying on the floor, bricks strewn across the concrete. Victoria Rivera. Alive. Limp-bodied and still. Smoke gathers in the air in black plumes of a lung-choking death.

Terror. Always the terror running through me like a cancer as I move towards her slow as molasses. Movement in the corner of my eye catches my attention. I dread to look, but I must, locked as I am in the vision.

I see him.

An ebony-cloaked figure wearing the mask of a bird with large, black, soulless eyes. The mask has wings that unfold, and when they do, the beak opens. It grows larger, so large it’s taking up the entire room, smoke furling around its visage, swallowing firelight. 

It comes for me, the black inside of the mouth fills my vision. I hold my arms up in a helpless display of defense and am swallowed whole, plummeting into the dark belly of an abyss that never ends.

* * *

I wake, gasping, my lungs burning like all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room. I glance about wildly - the masked man doesn’t form from the darkness, but I can’t escape the thought that he might. The sheets are wet against my body, and I draw in great sucks of air. 

As my vision adjusts, the shadows in the room seem familiar. Streetlight filters through the curtains. Piles of clean laundry on the dresser. Dirty washing overfills the basket in the corner. The wardrobe doors are shut. Boxes of books and piles of knick-knacks in another corner. Cords hang from the hooks behind the door, along with my kit for weekend rugby. 

My heartbeat slows, and I release my grasp on the sheets. I’ve never had a dream like that. I’ve had dreams that have given me chills. Dreams that saddened me. Disgusted or horrified me. But here I am, clutching my sheets, staring about my room. Looking for an intruder. Hoping I’m awake and not caught in some second dream of a dream scenario. 

The heater creaks but that’s nothing out of the ordinary. Somewhere in this block of flats, someone has their television up loud, and the muted tell of conversation comes through the walls. A lorry backs up outside, its incessant  _ beep beep beep _ piercing the air. 

Sweat rolls down my back. I get up to change my sheets, stepping carefully and quietly as I do, as if I might disturb something unseen. 

Is this a sign of Victoria getting desperate? Scaring me into action? What were the circumstances surrounding her death? Chanting? A masked man? What the fuck?

I sag onto the bed, hands clasped between my knees. I’m not going back to sleep now. I’ve got to make headway on this case. I need something more. I need some fucking sleep.

As a kid, when these midnight visitations happened, Nan would make me some warmed milk and sit with me awhile. I’d tell her what happened, and she’d ask me to remember things - what did I hear? What did I smell? Did anything seem out of place? She made me feel...normal. God, I miss her. 

After she died, I cried to my da when I had a visitation. He told me to man up, to remember they were only dreams, and to get back to bed. 

They weren’t only dreams. And it’s never useful to sit around thinking of my da. 

It’s time to face the inevitable; it’s time to let the spirit move me.

I go out into the sitting room, restlessness ricocheting within me like a jar of dropped marbles. I fetch my sketch pad and kit from the desk and set up on the coffee table. Pencils to the right. Paper center. I lean over it for a moment, recalling bits of the dream. Victoria’s face, her eyes blissfully closed, but her mouth opened in an “O” of surprise. Her body a tumble of long, doe-like limbs spread across the floor. The V-shaped pendant on her necklace and a ring on one hand. 

I shudder to think of the masked man. Her attacker? I rarely, if ever, see other people in these visions. 

I light the candle on the coffee table, place it to the right of the paper. Pick up the pencil, and to get myself into the mood, I begin by sketching her face.

The fugue comes upon me faster than normal. I’m in its grip like a rabbit in the talons of a hawk. Her face, his mask, my hand moving across the paper. I sink in like I’m not even there.

_ I’m not even there. _

I gasp, force my lungs to work, shove myself from the table and back against the sofa. My body shakes and I make my hand drop the pencil. It was possessive, grasping, wholly encompassing me. Like I was no longer in my body.

_ “You want him to float away one day and not be able to get back in?” Nan shouted. My da was shoving me away from her, with her candles and her incense and the pile of colourful cards with illustrated figures and symbols. “If I don’t teach him, we might lose him!” _

Ever since those words. Ever since that day.

I do what I do because I have to. But the fear is always there, a little dark cloud in the back of my mind threatening rain. Someday, someone strong might enter, and I might never get myself back.

It’s why I do this the way I do - short sessions with sketches, dreams, and then shoving it all together to solve the case.

I push the memory of her voice from my mind. I’ve got to solve this case, and quickly. I make myself look down at the page. Staring back at me is the bird-mask. Some kind of corvid, like a raven or a magpie. 

And beside it, a symbol of some kind. Like an emblem. Nothing I’m familiar with. 

I dash back into my bedroom and take the phone from the charger. I snap a photo of the drawings, and then I put everything away - but the candle - on my desk. Most of the pages in the pad have detached over time, and there are years of victims to be found in them. Each one, their faces, the objects they showed me, the places their bodies were found, or other places that signified something important to their case - their resolution.

Among them is Sherlock. Several sketches, attempts where I tried to invite him in. All these years, all these spirits entered my body to show me their plight, and here the pushiest of them all - I would have thought - and he never had the decency to show up. For all those years I resented this ability, and then numbly accepted it, and again, the people I want to see…

It’s no use thinking about it.

I blow the candle out, and turn the lights on. It’s time to get some coffee. 


	4. Tracing Echoes

“We got a new report from Missing Persons,” Sally says as she plonks it on my desk. “A Victoria Rivera. No one’s seen her in at least five days, according to her father, Delgado Rivera.”

I have to grab the edge of the desk to keep my relief from showing. 

“You okay?” she says.

“Fine. Tell me more.” My heart thumps as my ears flush with heat.

“She’s twenty-three, 5 foot 10 inches, brown hair, brown eyes, weighs nine stone. Attended King’s College. Her mother was an English national before she died in 2007, and her father immigrated here from the US in 1999.”

“Mm. Where’s the father?” I feel the sudden need to pick up a pencil, but I push it back. Victoria seems to linger behind me; a tingle creeps across my neck.

“Hm. Well, will you look at that? He works for Cardiac.”

“Cardiac?” I say.

“You know, Cardiac?” She looks askance at me. “Don’t tell me you don’t know - I thought you were a Last Heartbeat fan.”

I stare at her, waiting.

“Jules Mathison and Michael Haverly own it.”

Of course. “You’re telling me, that strait-laced Jules Mathison of Last Heartbeat, owns a pub?” Interesting that Victoria dated Michael Haverly, who owns the place where her father works. 

“It’s not just a pub. It’s a concert venue. Jules Mathison owns it, but he puts new bands up on stage. Gets in quite the crowd. Seems Mr Rivera works there as a technician. Lighting and pyrotechnics.”

“Pyrotechnics?” I say with raised eyebrows.

“Yep,” she says with a pop of her lips.

“So that’s how Michael Haverly and Victoria Rivera know each other.”

Sally raises her eyebrows at me. “You keepin’ up on the gossip, then?”

“Uh, used to be a big fan of the band. Cass and me saw them a few times, back in the day.” Before paperwork and ghosts took over my life, tired me out. Left Cass to her own devices and her own diversions.

“That relationship’s only been on a few months. Ha! You read the tabloids, I knew it.” Her smile is one of glowing triumph.

“Get your coat and the car keys,” I say as I push myself up from my desk, my chair rolling back as I do. “It’s mid-Thursday. Put the constables on getting to know Victoria’s neighbours and any of her personal connections. Let’s go and see this Delgado Rivera. And then we’ll speak to Michael Haverly.”

“You think the body’s hers, then?”

“Call it a gut feeling.”

“Got it. Oooh, maybe we’ll get to see Jules Mathison up close.” She recoils from the look I give her. “What? He’s fit, ain’t he?”

“Yeah,” I agree. “But try to keep it professional, right?”

Sally laughs as she leaves the room. It feels good to hear it. Like things are getting back to normal.

And now that we can connect Victoria Rivera to this case, once we’ve compared her dental records, maybe I’ll finally get some well-deserved sleep. 

* * *

“Mr Rivera, I’m Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade, and this is Detective Sergeant Sally Donovan. We’re here about the missing persons report on your daughter, Victoria Rivera,” I say.

Delgado Rivera is tall and thin like his daughter. Light brown skin and dark eyes. Salt and pepper hair, maybe more pepper than mine, pulled back in an elastic band, the stringy ends hanging between his shoulder blades. He’s bent over a set of amplifiers on the stage. As he straightens, he looks us both in the eyes and then glances at my badge.

“This way, officers,” he says with a lift of his shoulder, indicating we should follow him. He leads us to a tiny office behind the stage. A small desk is buffeted by stacks of paper. The room is cluttered with guitar picks, paper clips, band paraphernalia like t-shirts and bizarre funkos, and stickers - stickers everywhere. They paper the door and the walls and the back of the office chair and the desk drawers. It smells of cigarettes, and sure enough, I can see the overflowing ashtray on the floor next to the chair. Electronic equipment leans in a tower in the corner of the room. A fire extinguisher on the floor gives me only a second of relief that I’d at least have that while closed up in this fire trap. Sally shuts the door behind her but not before giving the state of the room a worrying glance herself. 

“I talked to the cops this morning,” he says. His face is lined with worry. I get the feeling he’s the type to avoid cops as often as he can.

“I read the report,” I say. “We’re doing a little investigation to see if we can connect it to our current case.”

“What case is that?” he asks as his thick eyebrows meet in the middle. 

“I need to ask you some questions first. Have you got any photos of Victoria?”

“I gave them photos.”

I saw the photos. Victoria with her hair pulled up in a topknot and a stylish scarf around her neck. I couldn’t see her jewellery.

“Here, this is her Instagram,” he says and hands me his phone. 

I look. She’s smiling at the camera in an off-the-shoulder blouse, a gold necklace hanging between her breasts - the pendant in the shape of a “V.” 

I knew the burn vic was her. Still, though, seeing this smiling photo of a young woman, confirming that it’s her, it cuts right through me like a blade. As suddenly as I realise it, I feel her with us, the pressure at my back, the urge to grab a pen from the cup holder on the desk flooding me. I push her back. I keep my face neutral as I hand back Mr Rivera his phone. “Thank you, sir. When’s the last time you heard from her?”

We go through the usual line of questioning: who might have spoken to her last, what was her usual day-to-day routine, boyfriends, enemies, recent issues with anyone…

“What’s her relationship like with Michael Haverly?” I ask. She lingers still, scratches at the place between my shoulder blades. I’ve never tangled with a presence such as hers, and I have to make a strong effort to focus. 

“Eh, he’s a good guy, but too old for her if you ask me,” Mr Rivera says. He’s been twisting a black cord in his hands. “I’ve honestly tried to keep her away from here, you know. Just...she’s a beautiful girl and I didn’t want her falling in with the wrong crowd. Not that we’ve got the wrong crowd here...I just don’t want her to be some band’s groupie. Lots of pretty girls get kinda fucked up that way. Seen it happen. Don’t want it for her. Of course, she shares my love for music. I can’t stop her from coming here, or going to any other venues in the city. She loves to have a good time, just like any young woman.” He wears an earring in one ear and on occasion, he lifts a hand to fiddle with it. “But you know, I never really have to worry about her that much. Vicki does what she wants when she wants, not before or after. No use trying to talk her out of anything.”

This strikes me as true as the niggling at my back intensifies. I give her a big mental shove.

“Mike treated her well, I think. I got nothing against him. They’re still friends.”

“Were they serious?” Sally asks.

“I just asked Mike that he be respectful with her. He told me he’d treat her well.” He stares down at the black cord in his hands. “Not much more for me to do beyond that. It didn’t strike me as serious. I don’t think she was in love with him. I think she liked him, and the gifts he gave her, but to be honest, I think she spent more time with that Tansy Winters chick than she did with him.”

“Did she break it off with him?” I ask.

“I was told it was mutual.”

“Would you say Tansy Winters is her closest friend?”

“Yeah. And I like that less than her seeing Mike. That girl’s the wrong sort. I know she’s the kind to drink and party too much. Vicki didn’t care what I said about her, of course. I called Tansy to ask if she knows where Vicki’s been, or when the last time she saw her was, but she wouldn’t talk to me.” His knuckles go white over the cord. “Sorry. I just -” He draws in a deep breath. “I’m worried. It’s not like Vicki. She’s always talked to me at least once every other day. At least a text. We only have each other since Bev died. I...I’m worried.”

My heart squeezes. The job sucks when you know the loved one isn’t coming home. Having to look a parent or loved one in the face while you know - and you’re the only one to know, aside from the murderer - is the fucking pits. You have to box up what you know and stuff it away in an attic or a basement. You can’t let it show on your face. You can’t let it squeeze your chest so tight you might struggle to breathe.

I hope Delgado Rivera has good friends.

“As soon as we know anything, we’ll let you know, Mr Rivera,” I say.

“You can call me Del,” he says, his voice less choked-sounding. “That’s how they know me around here.”

“Do you have an address and phone number for Tansy Winters?” Sally says.

I know the address, but I’m not going to tell her. I’m already trying to decide how I get rid of Sally so I can go speak to Tansy alone, and not have the fact that I’ve already seen Tansy become public knowledge. 

Del gives Sally the info. I hand him my card. “If you hear anything, or should Victoria show up -” I say this smoothly; I’ve done years of lying now, “- you call me and let me know.”

“Thanks, Inspector,” he says, staring down at the card, his eyes ghosting over. 

“We’ll let you know if we hear anything,” I say. A distinct sadness weighs on me - it’s not mine. Victoria’s upset.

 _You and me both,_ I think to her.

We leave, waving bye to the blonde girl in the ticket window. 

“Did you see anything in the photo?” Sally asks as we hit the pavement in bright daylight. It’s almost painful to my eyes. 

“Yeah. Gold, V-shaped pendant on a chain. Just like the one on our burn vic,” I say. The presence at my back softens, relents in its pressure.

Sally’s mouth pulls down, and she shakes her head. “I’ll get the dental records.”

* * *

I manage to get rid of Sally by sending her after the constables. Most of them do good work, but a lot of it is tedious: combing through phone records, double-checking CCTV footage, canvassing neighbourhoods, calling to check alibis. It helps to stay on top of them by being a general pain in the arse.

Now that we’re both sure that Victoria is our vic, we’re moving in tandem. We need to know her whereabouts from last week, who she hangs out with, get interviews with the band members (while Sally manages to keep her fangirling suppressed), and get those dental records to Molly.

Sally asked if I needed her for the interview with Tansy Winters, and I said as I understood it from the gossip rags, Tansy liked a silver fox.

“Oh, go on with you,” she said with a laugh.

Now I’m back, having used my badge with the doorman to get into her building. It’s a posh place in Chelsea. All classic looking, swirling and speckled marble, columns, large deep green jungle plants artfully placed around the lobby, an ornate tile floor with fleur-de-lys designs - the kind of place where an old guy like me sticks out with his worn overcoat and coffee-stained shirt. It smells of chalky stone and air conditioning, despite the chill outside. The leaves of the trees along the streets are changing, but this building seems to still be using their air conditioning. Wasteful.

The concierge rings Tansy’s flat, and in moments, I’m in the mirrored elevator headed up to her floor. It probably wouldn’t hurt if I try to fix myself up a bit, but my hair is in spikes and there’s nothing to be done about the bags under my eyes or the ever-deepening lines on my face. I know I look good for a bloke in my forties, but Tansy’s hanging out with hot celebrities. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to try and charm her a bit.

When she answers the door, her face darkens. “You again?” The little papillon - _Beaver_ \- dances around our ankles.

“Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade,” I say, holding up my badge.

“Are you harassin’ me?”

“Not at all, Ms Winters,” I say. “I’m afraid Victoria Rivera has been reported as missing, and it’s procedure for us to interview all of her friends and family.”

One hand flies to her chest as her eyes widen. “Oh. Oh god.”

“May I come in, please?” I ask.

Without a word, she steps back, gestures me in.

“I see that that’s a bit of a shock.”

“Well, I haven’t heard from her...but I did miss a call from her dad. I didn’t call him back.” She waves her hands around like dry leaves in the breeze. “Um, I guess, you’d want to sit?”

Her flat would be straight out of a designer catalogue if it weren’t for the clothes strewn about and the haphazard scattering of handbags and shoes. Cass would die on the spot seeing this girl’s wardrobe. The place smells slightly of cigarettes and more strongly of scented candles. I can see an ashtray out on the balcony overlooking the rooftops of the upscale neighbourhood. 

“Nice view,” I say.

Tansy pushes aside some of the clothes on a crisp white, futuristic sofa that probably costs half my salary. She sits across from it in an egg-shaped chair that likely would cost another quarter.

I take a look at her. Her hair is down, one side pulled back in a clip. No shades. Make-up with heavy eyeliner. A pink crop top and slim-fitting jeans. Her eyes are a bit unfocused and her pink lips parted, but she’s not looking at me, and she’s gripping her thighs, shoulders rounded. Protective.

“Are you sure she’s missing?” Tansy asks, her eyes finally meeting mine.

“Like I said, her father has filed a report. Says he hasn’t heard from her in five days. Claims they text almost every other day.” I peer closely at her. “When’s the last time you heard from Victoria?”

“I guess it was about then. Maybe six.” She wraps her arms around her.

“Is it usual for you to go that long without talking?” I ask. 

“No,” she says. I hope she’s being honest, as we are checking Victoria’s phone records. “We had a little...well, we had a little argument. It was stupid.” 

“What was it about?” Victoria is back. It’s only a gentle push this time. My guess is she’s run out of steam. I don’t expect to hear from her for much longer. Usually, I can only feel the presence of the ghosts once or twice per case while I’m awake. It’s starting to creep me out that she’s so... _present._

Tansy bites her lip. “It was very personal. I can’t say. It - it had nothing to do with her taking off or anything like that. She didn’t say anything about leaving.” She looks at me as she gestures with one hand, her mouth forming a small smile. “You know, Inspector. It was just girl stuff. We probably would’ve made up by the end of the week.”

“Ms Winters, anything you tell me will be helpful. What date and what time was this? Was this by text, in person?”

“In-person,” she says. “October 9th, I think. Yeah. She came over to help me do some planning for a benefit I’m putting on.” 

“What time was that?”

“Four, I think? We had tea.” She brings out her phone, opens an app. “Yeah, about then. She’d have to sign in with the concierge, so you’d get the right time then. Cameras in the lobby, too.” She clears her throat and pinches her lips together.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Are you gonna write any of this down?” she asks.

I tap the side of my temple. “Good memory.” It’s too risky to hold a pencil when I’m on a case...especially with a client as pushy as Victoria, it seems. “Was this a rip-roaring fight, or just a little tiff?”

“I love her, you know,” she says. I blink at the non-sequitur. “We fought, but it was...it was stupid, in the end. We had a disagreement. No one yelled. Just, feisty. Hot-tempered, that’s all. Nothing - I would never do anything to her.”

“No one says you did,” I say. “This is procedure. We’ll be interviewing all of her friends. And actually, it would be helpful to me if you gave me a list of names, phone numbers, and addresses of people I should talk to. Starting with a boyfriend, or anyone who wanted to be her boyfriend. Exes.”

“Like Mike?” she asks, her eyes wide. “Mike wouldn’t hurt a fly. He liked her a lot, but they weren’t right for each other. They parted as friends.”

“Her father seemed to think so, too.”

“Del’s a great guy,” she says, her lips turning upward at the corners. “He and Vicki were close.”

“Hm. Must be why he ended up making the report instead of you,” I say. _Were_ , she said. Her tenses. Interesting.

Her face twists. “We had that stupid fight. I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Why? Has something happened to her?” I ask.

She flinches. “What? I just mean...if something did happen to her...I mean, people don’t just go missing, do they? Vicki loved her life. She had no reason to leave it. And she wouldn’t leave her father hanging like that now, would she? She loved him. She might have been angry with me, but she’d have no reason to leave him like that.”

I lean back. “Tell me more about her and Mike.”

Tansy lifts one shoulder and tosses her hair back. “Not much to tell. It was over a couple months ago. We’ve hung out with him and some of the guys since then. As I said, they’re friends.” She’s getting defensive - steel edges her words and a challenge grows in her eyes.

“Anyone new in her life?”

Her eyes flicker. “Not that I know of. She’s always had admirers, you know. Blokes with crushes. No one really knew her, though. They saw her as some kind of trophy.” She scoffs. “Vicki was smarter than that. She set her eyes on what she wanted and she went for it. She was never gonna be someone’s trophy.”

“Was there someone she wanted?”

Tansy lets out a little laugh, stretched and bell-like. “Well, I don’t know, not for sure. When she wanted Mike, she went for it. Now? I can’t say.” She licks her lips. “I mean, interview the rest of the people she’s friends with. You’ll find someone who wanted her, but not sure they’d have caught her eye. She was cagey about those things, usually. And she hated the publicity on her and Mike’s relationship. Stressful, you know, with the paps everywhere.”

“I imagine you have some experience with that, yourself,” I say with a bit of sympathy inflected in my tone.

“Yeah,” she says with another laugh. “It’s hell sometimes, and other times…” She waves one hand. Tansy Winters got her start with the paps on account of a leaked sex tape. I’m sure it caused a lot of tension with her wealthy parents, but she cashed in on it pretty quickly with several features in tabloids and keeping herself in the papers with her partying exploits and dramas. 

“So, I have an AA meeting to get to in a little while,” she says, her voice trembling. Likely with nervousness. She glances at the trendy sports watch on her wrist.

“I need the names of those people, and how I can reach them,” I say. “Anyone you can think of. And I need them now. If Victoria is still alive, I want to help her.” It’s a test, mentioning that Victoria might be dead.

Tansy’s face crumples. She nods as she covers her mouth with one hand. “Okay,” she says with a whoosh of air. “I’ll do that now.”

“Thank you,” I say. I feel bad for making her think that Victoria might not actually be dead when I know she is actually dead, but I need to see her reactions. This is the sort of thing Sherlock would do. He wasn’t kind about it, ever. But it was effective.

God, I miss that arsehole. It hurts to think of him.

Tansy has her phone in her hand and she’s writing down a list of names and numbers on a piece of paper she’s pulled out from beneath the weird kidney-shaped coffee table. I watch her write, her make-up still in place despite a few tears that have trickled down her cheeks. 

“Will you...will you please keep it a secret, that you talked to me?” she asks. “I mean...I don’t…”

A bit of anger twists in my gut. “You don’t want to be connected to the investigation in the papers? Your celebrity status might actually help us find her, you know.”

Tansy blanches. “No,” she says. “That’s not - that’s not what I mean, or why. I just…” She breathes in. “Sorry, forget it. You’re right. I want her found.” She wipes away fresh tears. She meets my eyes. “Please, please find her.”

 _Already found._ “I’ll be doing my best,” I say. “I can promise you that.”

She nods her head, bites down her lips. “Thank you.”

“I can see myself out,” I say as I stand.

“Okay,” she says, her voice quiet, her arms hug herself. My heart pinches just a bit. It’s like I’m leaving her adrift in material trappings without an anchor. 

“If I need to speak to you again, I’ll call you,” I say as I open the door. “Thank you for your help.”

She gives a sharp nod of her head. 

I leave.

* * *

When I buckle my seat belt and check my phone, I see a missed call from Molly.

“Molly. Do you have those dental records?”

“I know Sally’s on it,” she says. “Haven’t got them yet.”

“Okay then. What’s up?”

“I thought you should know that our burn victim was pregnant at the time of her death,” Molly says.

The thin wails of a newborn. 

I swallow. 

Molly doesn’t say anything. But we both know what this means - we find the father, we’ve probably found her killer.

“Okay, then,” I say. “Thanks for telling me.”

I hang up and stare out the windshield. The sky is growing dim as the daylight dwindles.

Victoria’s presence has faded.


	5. Shades of Grey

It was another near sleepless night. Fire, smoke, bizarre bird-like masks, the building. The ground opening up in a tunnel of terror. Followed by me opening my mouth to scream and my teeth falling out.

Love it when a visitation includes a bit of personal horror.

Aside from the spine-tingling sense of fear that’s followed me all morning, I’m fine. Really. Just fucking fine. I nearly microwaved a metal fork, and I almost fell down the stairs by tripping over my own feet, but seriously, just fine.

My Grandnan loved to tell me stories. She’d tell me of Persephone and how she became Queen of the Underworld, dying and being born anew every year. Orpheus lost his love Eurydice to the shadows of Hades as a punishment for his cowardice. Inanna’s descent and subsequent death for her hubris. Her resurrection. Savitri’s ingenuity, which granted her husband’s life when faced with Yomi.

Tales of death, tales of challenge, tales of restoration. Myths from around the world of gods and demi-gods who enter the realm of Death, and emerge again. But I’m no god, and I can’t say for sure that where I go in my dreams is anything like a mythical Underworld.

The ghosts are real, though.

It’s this sort of headscape I’m wallowing in as I sit at my desk and flip on the computer, determined to sink myself into work. In my emails is a line from Molly. I rub my sleep-heavy eyes and read.

The dental records are a match.

I sag into the chair. I knew this was coming. And even though I knew, I can’t help the drop of my heart into my stomach, and the taste of ash in the back of my throat. It sucks to be right. Victoria’s appearance in my dreams guaranteed it. But it still sucks.

Though this is what I wanted, wasn't it?

Sally pokes her head in.

“Match,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says. “It’s a good thing, though, right? Because we can narrow our investigation.”

“Exactly.”

“And we’ve already got the constables on it early. That list you gave us yesterday.”

“Yeah,” I say. I stand up and grab my coat. I only placed it on the hook moments ago. “We gotta go inform her father.”

Sally nods. “Yeah.” No one likes this part of the job, but I guess over the years you do get desensitised to it. You have to.

“Let’s go,” I say. “I’ll drive.”

“No way,” she says. “Sorry, but you look like a lorry ran you over. I’m driving.”

* * *

Del, white-faced, brings a lit cigarette to his lips with a shaking hand.

“I’m very sorry, Mr Rivera,” I say again.

“Del,” he says. His eyes are glazed over. 

“There’s no need to come and identify the body, since we were able to identify her with the dental records.”

That gets his attention. “I can’t see her?”

“The body was burnt quite a bit,” I say.

“She was pregnant,” he says.

“You knew about her pregnancy?”

“Yeah,” he says and stubs the fag out despite there still being half of it left. We’re sitting in that same, tiny office full of hazards in the back of Cardiac. 

“Do you know who the father is?” I’m betting on a one-night stand with the ex, Michael Havery. 

Del curls his hand around a paper cup. Crushes it. It’s a while before he answers. We wait, silently. “I couldn’t be sure. She wouldn’t tell me.” He throws the paper cup into a metal rubbish bin by the door. He reaches behind a stack of paper and brings out a bottle of Jack Daniels. Unscrews the top, takes a swig. “She’d been hanging around with Jules Mathison. I told her not to. I said it was a bad idea. I didn’t think him the type, but he seemed flattered by her interest. I know she and he and Tansy Winters all partied together.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Jules Mathison parties? With alcohol and the like?”

“Oh, he doesn’t drink, that’s for sure.” He takes another pull from the bottle. “Everyone thinks he’s a goddamn angel. But I saw how he looked at Victoria.” He raises a hand over his eyes. His mouth screws into a grimace. “Oh my god. Victoria.”

I expected to feel her. She’s gone quiet. Which is in line with what I’ve experienced - the ghosts can make themselves known in the waking hours, but only a couple times. Then they fade away. Still able to make it to my dreams, but unable to reach me while I’m awake.

I can’t say why it works that way. 

Sally glances at me. “So, not Michael Haverly?”

He rubs his mouth and drops his hand. “Breakup was a couple months ago. She told me it wasn’t him.”

I sigh as I say, “I have to ask you, Mr Rivera, and I’m sorry for this but it’s procedure. Where were you on the night of October 12th?”

“Uh.” He draws a breath. Releases it. “I think I was here. That was a Friday, right? Yeah. I was here.” I try not to notice the tears glimmering in his eyes. This part of the job sucks. 

“Do you remember what time?”

“I start at about 4 in the afternoon. I usually work until about midnight.”

“And what is it exactly that you do here?”

He lets out a sharp huff. “Do I have to answer these questions now?”

“We’re investigating her death, Mr Rivera,” says Sally. “If there’s anything else you can think of, please, let us know.”

“Jules Mathison,” he says and covers his eyes with his hand again. “Ask him. Ask that sonuvabitch.”

* * *

“So, what are you thinking?” Sally asks. 

“I’ve got to, um...well, let’s ask her.” The blonde girl at the ticket window is probably no more than twenty-five, with glittery clips in her hair and sticky gems around her eyes. 

“Hi again,” I say.

“Inspector, hi,” she says. “Can I help you with something?”

“Perhaps you might be able to. What’s your name?”

“Polly Bradshaw,” she says and flips back her hair. 

“Mind if I ask you a few questions, Ms Bradshaw?” 

“Sure,” she folds her hands in front of her. 

“Del Rivera works here as an engineer, yeah?”

“Yeah, he does the lighting and the pyrotechnics.”

“And he works every weekend?”

“Just about.”

“Was he here on the night of October 12th?”

Polly checks a calendar hanging on the wall. It’s goats balancing on a see-saw.

“Um, well, yeah. But now I remember…” She gives us a furtive glance. “What’s this about?”

“I’m afraid I can’t share any details. We’re just checking things we need to check.”

“Um, well, he was here at first. But he was drunk when he got here.” She looks around as if to see if anyone else is listening. “Look, Del’s a nice bloke, but he raises his wrist a little too often if you know what I mean. That night, he was told to go home and sober up.” She bites down on her lower lip.

Sally and I exchange glances.

I hand Ms Bradshaw my card. “Thank you.”

Polly looked embarrassed and discomfited as she whispered, “He really is a good ‘un. Just has a problem, you know what I mean, Inspector?”

“Yes, unfortunately, I do.” We head back inside the stage area.

Del is gone from the office. Another technician, looking a little bewildered, informs us that he left out the back door.

We go out the back door which leads into a narrow alleyway smelling of booze and piss.

No Del Rivera.

* * *

I groan as I flop into my chair, the wheels squeaking in protest. “So, we’ve got to go back to Del at some point and get a new account for his whereabouts that night. Have we got hold of the band?” 

“I talked to their manager this morning,” Sally says as she leans against my desk. “Jules Mathison and Michael Haverly are returning from France tonight. We can catch them tomorrow. Do you really believe what Del says about Jules? And how come he didn’t say anything before?”

I lean back in my chair, and the creaking rips through the air. I need a better chair. One with actual lumbar support. I’m a fucking DI, aren’t I? Even if I am in disgrace.

At last, Victoria seems to be gone. Despite that, I’ve locked the pens and pencils into a drawer of my desk, as usual.

“Maybe Del thought nothing had come of it. Maybe he’s thinking differently now. Why, what do you think?”

“He’s got that golden boy image, you know. So many celebrities are riddled with scandal - cheating, drugs, gambling, all that. Jules Mathison has been married to the same woman for almost fifteen years, talks about her like they’re still in love in all their interviews. Doesn’t do drugs. Doesn’t drink. Has shed loads of money. Why throw that all away on one twenty-something, no matter how pretty she is? She isn’t the only pretty girl on the scene.”

“Who knows? I hope we learn more tomorrow.” I neaten the papers on my desk as I fight off a yawn. “Have Technical comb through the CCTV outside Victoria’s flat for any images of Jules Mathison.”

Sally’s eyes glint. “Already got them on it.”

“Good job,” I say. 

We’re interrupted by the door opening and DCI McGill coming in. His jowly face is its usual shade of puce. 

“Sir,” I say, hoping the dark bags beneath my eyes aren’t too obvious to him.

But of course, he doesn’t miss a thing. “Jesus, Lestrade, when’d you last sleep?”

“I did get in a few hours last night,” I say. “Once we’ve solved this case, I’ll sleep better.”

“How is the case?” He’s cordial, but something about his stance has me wary.

“We spoke to the father. Seems he lied about his alibi Friday night.”

“And have you brought him in for questioning?”

I cock my head. “We were just discussing it, sir.”

“I just read through what you’ve got out there.” He points out to the table where two constables sit with their heads ducked, combing through Victoria Rivera’s phone records. “I suppose you’re aware that Delgado Rivera has two domestic priors?”

“Well, no sir,” I say. “I’m sure they were about to let us know,” I say the last part loud enough for the constables to hear me.

“Lestrade,” McGill says as he shakes his head like I’m a tiresome child. “Get out there and get Rivera in here.”

“You think he did it?” I ask.

“She’s pregnant, right? Where’s Mr Rivera from? America? But he’s Brazilian, right? Probably one of those old-fashioned types that thinks women should be married before they’re getting themselves pregnant.”

“That’s a reach,” I say. 

“Alcoholic, two domestic priors. No alibi for that night after he lied about where he was.” He rubs his forehead. “You know, I’m not saying he killed her on purpose. Might’ve just lost his temper. Maybe she hit her head on a brick when she fell. He panics and sets the place alight. Maybe he was drunk. But we don’t know until you talk to him and get him to really tell you where he was and what he was doing. Right?” He tilts his head at me. I’m a rookie again, getting dressed down in the kindest way possible for the stupidest mistakes.

McGill shuts the door behind him and strides past the constables at the tables, their heads still bent over their paperwork.

“We don’t know that he doesn’t have an alibi.” I sink lower in my chair. I look down at the desk, my hands balled into fists out of Sally’s sight. 

Sally’s mobile rings, which I’m grateful for because I can’t quite look at her yet. I’m too busy buzzing with an impending sense of failure.

“Got something for me?” she says. A pause. I can’t hear the person on the other end.

“No, what?” Sally says. She sounds astounded. “Alright then. Thank you. Can you send the footage to my email? Thanks.”

I look at her, thankful for the distraction. “What was that?”

“Technical.”

I straighten. “That was fast.”

She smirks at me. “Well, it helps if you’ve been seeing Ted.”

I can’t help the grin on my face. “Ted, is it? That the nerdy one with the pocked skin?”

“Oh, go on you,” she says. “ _Ted_ is not the one with the pocked skin. He’s perfectly handsome.”

“Better looking than Phil, anyway,” I say.

“Oi, steady,” she says. “Anyway, Ted took a look - had his team take a look - and one of them’s found something.”

“And?”

She leans forward. “Jules Mathison outside Victoria Rivera’s flat with Victoria. Embracing. A kiss. On the afternoon of October the 7th.”

“No,” I say. “Would he be that stupid? Doesn’t he have paps on his tail?”

“Not sure he’s that relevant anymore for them to be following him all the time.”

“Sally,” I say with one hand over my heart. “I’m shocked that you’d downgrade him like that.”

“Ha. I just mean, he can probably spot a pap a mile away, and now he’s not the hot topic, is he? Especially if they’re all trying to follow Tansy Winters and that actor who got caught in another bloody affair with a pro.”

“Still. After everything you just told me about the guy? His devotion to his wife?”

“I’m as disappointed in him as you are.”

I cross my arms. “That’s quite the pedestal for this rockstar to fall from.”

“Ted’s sending me the footage. I’ll forward it to you.”

“Okay. Okay. So, we’ve got a good idea on who the father is. Give Ted a kiss for me.” I stand up with a grin plastered across my face. “Del was right. Jules Mathison.”

“Jumping the gun a bit?” Sally winks.

“Maybe a bit. But you know what?”

“What?”

“I gotta wonder why Tansy Winters lied about it.”

* * *

“Hi Tansy,” I say with high cheer. Her little dog barks once, nails clicking in a dance across the wooden floor. “Inspector Lestrade again, and this is Detective Sergeant Sally Donovan.”

Tansy sighs, stands back, and lets us in. Her eyes are red and her mascara is smudged. “Why are you here?”

“Jules Mathison,” I say. Sally follows me in.

“What about him?”

“Is he the father of Victoria’s child?”

Tansy blanches. She reaches out for a chair and slides down into it. Beaver presses against her shin. “Jules? I - I…” 

Sally glares at me. 

I ignore her. “Tansy. Victoria was pregnant. Was it Jules Mathison’s?”

Tansy stares at me, her lips parted, her chest moving with her breath. “I...he might have been? Fuck, she was pregnant?”

I’m caught by surprise - Victoria’s at my back again. Pinching, angry, pushing, and shoving. I twitch, shake my head. Lick my lips. Draw a breath. 

“Sir?” Sally says.

“Are you alright?” Tansy asks.

“She told you,” I say. 

“Y-yes.” Tansy’s eyes glimmer. “And...she did - she did tell me about Jules.” Her face sinks into her hands. “Oh my god. Jules.”

“So, she and Jules Mathison were having an affair?” I push Victoria back so I can concentrate.

“Yes. I told her it was wrong. I told her she should stop.” She rubs her face. Reaches over to that weird kidney-shaped coffee table and snatches up a tissue. Her flat is in the same state of disarray. This time though, balled up tissues spot the floor and the sofa. “I told her she shouldn’t...you know, the bloke’s married and all. Eliza wouldn’t stand for that shit. It would wreck them.”

“Yeah,” I say. I have a special dislike for cheaters. My dislike is for both the committed partner and the person they cheat with. Though Victoria haunts my head and asks for my help, I’m not feeling particularly sorry for her at the moment. I’m feeling more...resentful.

Not that I think cheaters should get hit with a brick and then left to burn.

Just. It’s personal. An anger. A grief. A sense of _not enough._

 _Get out of my head._ She’s persistent. I’ve never met a spirit so persistent. I bite down on my tongue and refocus.

“So Victoria was having an affair with Jules Mathison. What did she tell you?” Sally asks.

“Just that he said he loved her, that they were being very careful.” Tansy blows her nose. “Listen, you can’t tell anyone I told you. I - there are people who care about these things.”

I jump in, eager to get out of this room. “What else can you tell us about the affair? Any nights that they were together? Did his wife know? Did Victoria receive any threats? Did she threaten Mathison with exposure?”

“No, no. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know whether or not Eliza knew. Victoria seemed fine. She seemed thrilled about being with him, actually. It was...indecent.” She wiped her face with a tissue. Seemed kind of funny for her to be calling Victoria indecent considering she was the one with a strategically leaked porno, but whatever. “I think it was just a fling. Nothing serious. Jules wasn’t leaving his wife or anything.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

Tansy glances at me. “I - I...it was that argument we had.”

“I specifically asked you about boyfriends.”

“I know.” She bursts into a fresh torrent of tears. “I know. And I should have told you. But Vicki swore me to secrecy and…” she’s shaking. Her whole body trembles. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I can’t - I just can’t. Please, you can’t tell anyone I told. You can’t.” 

“Relax, Ms Winters,” Sally says in a soothing tone. “We’re not sharing our notes with anyone right now.”

“Please,” she says. “I don’t want to be involved. I’m on the straight and narrow now. I’ve joined AA and I’m throwing a benefit and I...I don’t want to be involved.”

I can sympathise with someone who is trying to live their life right, but consequences catch up. And I’m not feeling particularly generous at the moment.

“Tansy,” I say with a steel edge to my voice. “You can’t keep things from us, or we can’t help Victoria.”

“Help her? Isn’t she dead?” Tansy drops her tissues into her lap as she holds my gaze with her blue-eyed stare.

“Yes,” I say. “But the person who killed her is still out there.”

Tansy nods. Her lower lip trembles. “She was my best friend. The last thing we did was fight.”

I see Sally glance at me in my periphery, but I hold Tansy’s gaze. “I’m sure Victoria knew you two would make up. You said it yourself.” Okay, I’m not a complete monster.

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah.”

I draw in a breath. “Tansy, where were you on the night of October 12th?”

Tansy takes a moment to think before answering, her eyes floating to the ceiling. “I was out with my friend, Mimi Tanner. She’s a good friend. We went out to dinner and then we went to Posh _,_ you know, that club downtown. Danced there until about one in the morning. Then I came home.” She pulls Beaver into her lap, laying a kiss on the wriggling dog’s head.

“Can I have Mimi’s phone number?”

Tansy nods. She recites it as I dial it into my phone.

“Thanks, Tansy. We’ll be leaving now. I’ll be in touch.” I head for the door with Sally on my heels. “I am sorry for your loss.”

“Yeah,” she says, and sniffles. 

We shut the door. I start to make the call to Mimi Tanner to check Tansy’s alibi. “We’ll need the constables to check Posh _._ ”

“Got it,” Sally says as she types into her phone.

We bump shoulders. It’s like old times, and despite my exhaustion, I smile.

Maybe tonight I’ll get some real sleep.

Maybe this will be the last time I hear from Victoria.


	6. Perspective

We see Michael Haverly first. He’s a thirty-two year-old man living a seemingly care-free, indie rockstar lifestyle. My eyes are drawn to his tattoo sleeves - dragons, geishas, cherry blossoms, curly smoke, swords, and samurai. It’s gorgeous and full of colour. 

He’s not bad-looking himself. Square jaw, blue eyes, big white teeth. His white t-shirt is torn at the sleeves, and a charcoal grey wool scarf loops around his neck. His jeans are tighter than I could stand to wear, but they show off his arse as he leads us into a room above the stage of Cardiac _,_ and gestures for us to sit down. I’m grateful for that because Michael Haverly is _tall._ At least 6’4”.

“So, what’s this all about?” he asks as he throws himself down on one of the sofas. I can tell Sally would prefer to stand, even though she sits, checking the sofa for stains and crumbs as she does. I glance before sitting too. Beer cans are scattered on the floor and plate of cigarette butts sits on the coffee table. An actual dinnerplate. It smells like a uni party gone stale. Incense burns on a corner table, choking the atmosphere with its cloying nag champa stench. 

“We’re here to talk to you about Victoria Rivera,” I say.

“Vicki? Jesus,” he says. “When I heard…” Haverly readjusts his posture. It looks like he wants to draw his legs up on the sofa, but is trying to remain seated like a professional adult.

“You used to date?” I mention.

He snaps up straight, his eyes wide. “What’s that?”

“You dated,” I state.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says. Frowns, a tight pull on the corners of his mouth. “Um, we did. Broke it off a few months ago. Stayed friends, though.”

“Why break it off?”

“We, just...well, it wasn’t very serious, to begin with. We had other people in mind, I think,” he says, lifting one shoulder. “We broke it off when, you know, the physical attraction had kinda run its course.”

I get the nagging sensation that he isn’t telling me the truth. “Sir, we need to ask you your whereabouts for the night of October 12th.”

“God, I...that was Friday night, yeah? Jules was out that night, so I was here, watching the new band.” He reaches up to one side of his face, brushing his fingers along his temple. “God. Vicki? Are you sure it’s her?”

“It’s her,” I say in a quiet tone.

“I - I need a cigarette.” He wiggles in his seat, his hands shaking a bit. “You mind if I smoke?”

“Please, go ahead,” I say. The urge to smoke myself is rising. When Sherlock fell, I’d made the vow to get back on patches and put an end to smoking, but my resolve was shrinking, as evidenced by the fag I smoked the other day with Tansy Winters.

“Yeah, thanks. Um…” He reaches in between the thready cushions and pulls out a half-crushed pack. He smiles at us sheepishly. “Reserves. I hide them all over the room because Jules hates them.”

His hands shake as he lights one. Like watching Del Rivera all over again when we had to tell him his daughter's body was lying in the morgue. I’m absorbed in the movements, watching him take a drag and feeling the smoke enter my own lungs, the buzz of nicotine going straight to my brain. I can envision every step, all the sensations, and I almost wish he’d offer.

“So, um, I was here, Friday night. That’s when it happened? How’d she die?” he says, his eyes fixed on mine. Clear as a blue sky on a summer’s day. “No one could tell me.”

“We can’t share those details with you,” I say. “What time did you arrive and what time did you leave?”

“Uh, I got here about six. I stayed here until one.”

“And who can verify that?”

He gives a little disbelieving grin. “You - you don’t think I did it, do you?”

“It’s procedure,” Sally says, a big smile on her face. I think she’s been a little starstruck this whole time. “Gotta eliminate everyone we can.”

“Right,” he says, as he focuses his attention on her. He has the kind of seductive and mesmerising gaze that any lead guitarist should try to cultivate with their audience. I can remember seeing him up on stage, playing a guitar solo, winking at the ladies in the audience. My own Cass, nearly drooling as she screamed his name, though it was my arm around her waist. But I didn’t begrudge her - the man is gorgeous. 

“Who can verify that?” I ask.

“Uh, well, we got cameras. For the backstage area and the car park. But lots of people who work here can vouch for it, and I hung out with some of the band before leaving. New band. Great sound. You’ll be seeing them around, no doubt. I think they oughta change their name though - Trojan Horse _._ Bit much, yeah?”

“Yeah.” I give him a smile. “And when you left at one, was anyone with you?”

“Well, I went home with this girl. April was her name. I, um, don’t recall her last name…”

“Have you got April’s number?”

“I don’t, actually. But, uh, I think she’s a friend of Polly’s - Polly works the door. I have her number. I can give you that. It’s not her shift today.”

“Please,” I say. 

“Yeah.” He brings out his mobile and checks. I hand him my notebook and he writes it down. “She was here Friday night, too.”

“And Del Rivera?” I ask, even though I know the answer is that Del came in and went home that night. Two constables went round his flat this morning, and he’s supposed to be cooling his heels at the station at this very moment. 

“I think he fell ill,” Haverly says. “I’m pretty sure he went home. But I can’t be a hundred percent.”

I nod. “When you and Victoria ended the relationship, would you say it was amicable?”

“Sure. Wasn’t...it wasn’t anything serious. We enjoyed the publicity - she’s a pretty girl, you know? Paps loved her.” He finishes his cigarette and puts it out on the plate, adding it to the precarious pile of butts. “It was good for my image to look like I had a steady girlfriend for once, as Jules put it. But it wasn’t gonna last long. We got on well, but I, um…” He looks down at the ground. His face shifts, as if he’s gone under some kind of realisation. 

“But?” I ask. Usually, I like to stay quiet and let people talk things out, but I get the feeling Mike Haverly is the type that likes to be engaged.

“I, uh...well turns out I don’t like to play second fiddle.” He runs a hand through his hair, as blond as wheat. “If you know what I mean. She had her eye on someone else, and while it was fun for a while, I decided to cut her loose. Let her go after what she really wanted, though I didn’t think she’d ever actually get it.”

“And who was that?”

Haverly smiles weakly at me. “Jules Mathison.”

* * *

He spent the next five minutes assuring us that Jules is a good guy, and that he’s devoted to his wife, and that Victoria Rivera was barking up the wrong tree. But she wouldn’t be the first girl to try, he said. And he expected that she wouldn’t be the last.

Jules Mathison is a different type of good looking from Michael Haverly. Maybe 6 foot, if that. Dark hair that curls around his ears and his face. Blue eyes that Cass once described to me as “soulful.” Wiry, smaller body, with a tight black shirt and black jeans. No earrings, no tattoos. What I mistook for a tattoo at first I can now see is black sharpie written on his wrist. Song lyrics, it looks like. 

“Mike looked pretty shook up when he left,” Mathison says after we make our introductions. 

“Would you please sit down, Mr Mathison?” I motion to the chair.

“Jules is fine. You know, ‘Mr Mathison is my dad,’ and all that.” It’s a strange thing for him to say, since we all know his parents died when he was young. It was part of his appeal - orphan rises to indie rock star. But people say strange things to the police at times.

He looks from me to Sally. Sally’s doing her best to be professional, but she is thrumming with energy beside me. “What’s this about?”

“How well did you know Victoria Rivera?”

Jules goes stock still. As still as a prey animal before a predator. “Victoria?” he says, though his voice is strange. “You’re here about her, then?”

That bedazzled look disappears from Sally’s face. She’s as alert as I am now.

I clear my throat and shift in my seat. “You of course know, Jules, that Victoria Rivera was found dead on the morning of October 13th.”

“Oh,” he lets out a little gasp. His face is white, as white as the doilies Grandnan used to tat while sitting in her favourite chair in the corner of the sitting room. All made with the same white linen thread. “You’re here because you think someone from Cardiac did it?” He swallows. “Mike?”

“It’s just procedure, sir,” I say with a smile. “Can you tell us about your relationship with her?” 

“Huh?” He glances at us. “I - uh, it’s...I mean, I knew her because she was with Mike for a while. And I know Tansy, and she and Tansy are tight… But um, I didn’t know her that well, or anything.” He shifts, places his elbows on his knees. “But it’s been hard to believe. Tansy must be devastated, and I haven’t seen Del at all.”

I don’t give away that I’ve already talked to Tansy. The less he knows, the better. Victoria is back - a lingering pressure at the back of my head, the tingling in my shoulders again. I roll one shoulder and then the other, wishing she'd go away. “I understand that she had her eye on you,” I say.

“Victoria?” He let out a laugh. “Heh, you know how it is, Inspector. Celebrity and all that. Lots of girls try their best. But Eliza’s my one-and-only. Been with her since I was twenty-one. You don’t throw away over ten years for a pretty face.”

Wish I could have told Cass that. Not that she would’ve listened.

“Yeah? Then do you want to explain what you were doing outside her flat on the afternoon of October 7th, giving her a friendly good-bye kiss?” I pull a still up on my phone and turn it around for him to see.

His eyes go wide as his jaw drops. Not so _soulful_ now. Scared, more like.

“Hey, now, listen, you -” He drops his head into his hands. Looks back up. His hands cover his mouth, and the air whooshes through his fingers. The knuckles are red, like they’ve been scraped. “You can’t tell my wife. It’s over between me and Vicki.”

“Obviously,” I say. “She’s dead.”

“Oh my god,” he says and runs both hands through his hair. Black as a raven’s wing. “It was just a quick fling. It was so stupid. Biggest mistake.”

“Want to tell us where you were on the night of October 12th?”

“That was Friday?” he says. “Um, well, I was home. With my wife. We were packing for our trip to France. Short trip, just to look at some property outside of Paris. You can talk to my wife.”

“You were there all night?” I say.

“Yeah. Call Eliza. You’ll see.”

“Eliza Mathison?” I say.

“Stewart,” he and Sally say in unison. I glance at Sally. She shrugs at me.

“Yeah,” Jules follows up. “She, uh, she wanted to keep her maiden name. Family reasons.”

“Got it,” I say. “Is there anything you’d like to tell us, Jules?”

He blanches. “What - what do you mean?”

“Well, you told us that you didn’t really know Victoria all that well, but you did have an affair with her. Would you like to admit to anything else?”

“N-no. I - I don’t have anything to hide.”

“Except from your wife?” I say, and before I know it, this old, dark anger bubbles in my gut. Sally makes a noise beside me. She knows about Cass. She’s also been the other woman. 

Jesus, people are complicated. Sometimes I prefer the dead ones.

“I did her wrong. It was...it was a mistake I’ll never make again. I’m - I’m devoted to my wife, Inspector.”

I nod, but I know he can feel my disapproval - and disbelief. “We’ll be in touch, Mr Mathison. Don’t leave London.”

Sally stays to get Eliza’s information as I stalk out into the hall. 

“You know, Victoria - or should I call you Vicki?” I say in a low whisper, hoping she can hear. “As angry as I get at Cass, I can’t lay the blame entirely at her feet. Some of it’s mine. But why go for a married one?” I shake my head. “Like you didn’t have your pick.”

It doesn’t matter. Not in the long run. Victoria still didn’t deserve to be murdered. 

I lean against the wall and sigh.

* * *

“Holy shit, Greg.” I jolt as Sally walks into my office. She’s saved me from falling asleep into my coffee cup, I realise. I’ve just had the displeasure of interrogating a tear-faced Del Rivera, who swears he went home and slept the night of October 12th. I believe him. But we need the evidence. Technical is supposed to be viewing CCTV.

Before I can think of anything else, she’s holding her phone in front of my face with a YouTube video playing. “Ted’s just sent me this.”

I take it from her and start at the beginning. 

It’s Eliza Stewart. Her coiffed brunette hair shines in the spotlights as she stands at a podium. Her gold earrings swing as she snaps her chin up to look at the reporters arrayed before the podium, her dark matte lips pulled into a frown. 

“My husband Jules Mathison was having an affair with a young woman named Victoria Rivera. This unfortunate young woman was found dead on the morning of October 13th, and my husband is now a suspect in the investigation. He claims he was with me on the night of October 12th, when Ms Rivera was allegedly murdered. I would like to state that he was not with me.”

“Holy fucking shit,” I say, as I stand and send my chair reeling.

“Yeah,” Sally says.

“Holy fucking shit.” I toss the phone back at her. “Get a team to him and bring him in for questioning. Now!”

I snatch my coat off the back of the chair and slide it on as I run out the door behind Sally, who’s barking orders at the constables. 

“She says she’s divorcing him on account of the affair,” Sally says as we hurry into the corridor toward the lift.

“We need her for questioning, too,” I say. “If she wasn’t with her husband, where was she?”

“Got it. Should we bring her in?” Sally asks. 

I frown. “You go talk to her. Bring Hopkins. I’ll question Mathison.”

“Roger that, sir.” 

DCI McGill shows up at the end of the hall and is waylaid by one of the secretaries.

“Christ, just what I need,” I say as I pivot. Sally follows. “Why do I always feel like I’m disappointing my dad when he looks at me?”

“Go out the back, I’ll dazzle him with my smile,” Sally says, pushing me toward the stairwell.

“Mm,” I grunt. “ We gotta clean this up before it becomes a publicity nightmare.”

“Go, go, go,” she says. “There’s a team on the way to Mathison’s flat and one on the way to Cardiac _._ We’ll find him. I’ll drive with Hopkins to find Stewart.”

“Catch you later,” I say and rush for the stairs. Vicki is absent, but something in my gut tells me she won't stay that way. "We're gonna get this arsehole," I mutter as I pound down the steps. "You hear me? We're gonna get him."


	7. Cross-Hatching in Shadows

I chance unlocking my pen drawer and write out a few notes before going in for the interview with Jules Mathison. I broadcast waves of  _ Keep Away _ for Vicki’s benefit. I can’t even say how this all works. Sometimes the ghosts are strong enough to do it, and sometimes they aren’t. Vicki Rivera is unlike any visitation I’ve had. She kind of scares me. I’m not sure if she’ll show up again, pressing at my spine like a perp with a gun.

But I need to focus. Mathison is sitting in the interrogation room. Sally spoke to the wife and checked her alibi. I want to get it done and get it done right. Get this pushy, adulterous spirit out of my life and get some real sleep.

Closure and justice for her, sleep for me. 

“Hey, we finally have the report from the arson inspector,” Sally says as she hands a file to me. “It seems something called a ‘gerb’ was involved. It’s a type of firework that releases a jet of sparks that can last for up to sixty seconds and can reach a height of fifteen metres. And the type used here was probably thirty seconds and three metres.” She gives me a meaningful look. “The kind of thing you’d use in a concert hall.”

I let out a loud sigh. “This points us right back to you-know-who.”

Sally frowns. “Delgado Rivera. And anyone else working in the back of Cardiac, though I imagine he must have a key and locks his equipment up. At least, I hope he does.”

“And that means Jules Mathison and Michael Haverly have a key, being that it’s their place.”

“Yeah.”

“What does the wife say?”

“She was with her sister, Chloe Higgins. Alibi checks out, so long as Chloe wasn’t lying.” Like sisters never lie.

“How’d she find out about Victoria? Jules explain it to her before we went asking for her word on his alibi?”

“Got it in one.”

“Christ,” I say. “Well, we’ve gotta go in and question him. He’s been sitting there about an hour.” It had gone smoothly, with Jules agreeing to come in, sans handcuffs. He had been at his home. I’d followed the constables in a car, sat him down in an interview room. Gave him a cup of water. 

“Hopefully it gives us more than Mr Rivera did,” she says. CCTV placed Delgado Rivera picking up paracetamol from a shop at seven p.m. He told us he went home and didn’t emerge. The pinch between my shoulder blades told me Vicki was not happy with my interviewing him. The wrecked look on his face when we finally let him leave will haunt me for weeks. I’m pretty certain he didn’t do it. But with this bit about the gerb? Jesus Christ. 

I can’t focus on that right now, though. It’s time to put pressure on Jules Mathison.

“Lestrade.” A shadow darkens my door. McGill.

“Sir?” I say.

“You got that arson report?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me see it.” McGill glances over it. A muscle twitches in his chin. “This is a nightmare. I got reporters calling me, practically knockin’ down the door. This is big, Lestrade. You okay to handle it? You still look like you’re losing sleep.”

My ears burn. “I can handle it, sir.”

He waves a hand my way. “Sorry, sorry. I know you’re on top of things.” He rocks on his heels. “You’re good. I’ve been looking over the notes. Seems you got two major suspects - the dad and the boyfriend.” McGill looks in the direction of the interview room. “My bet’s on the boyfriend. Always is, right? Known for being faithful to his wife, about to disappoint millions of fans if word gets out that he’s as faithless as the rest of them. Mistress gets pregnant and ends up dead. Open and shut, am I right?”

“Looks like it,” I say, a bit relieved McGill isn’t focusing on Del Rivera. Or maybe that relief belongs mostly to Vicki. It’s hard to say. “He’d need a rock-solid alibi.”

McGill eyes me, like he’s scanning for weaknesses. I keep my eyes open, and my posture straight in an attempt to exude confidence. 

“Well,” he says as he gives me a sharp nod. “You better get in there.”

“Yes, sir,” I say. I grab my file of notes, lock the pen back in the drawer, and head down to the interrogation room. Sally follows me with quiet footsteps.

Jules is sitting in the chair. His knee jiggles in a fast, ungainly rhythm. One hand closes around the cup of water. His other hand lies on his thigh, alternately squeezing and releasing. Sweat gleams on his brow.

“Jules Mathison,” I say. “It’s 4:03 pm on October the 18th. Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade and Detective Sergeant Sally Donovan present.”

“I, uh, I can explain - about Friday night.”

“Relax Jules, we’ll get there,” I say as I settle into the chair across from him. Sally sits beside me. “Did you get plenty of water?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” He rubs a hand through his hair. “About Friday -”

“Your wife surprised you, did she?” Sally says.

“Um, well…”

“It was a surprise for us, too,” I say. “How is your relationship with your wife?”

Jules lets out a loud sigh. His eyes are riveted to the tabletop, though his body keeps moving, twitching and shifting. “I thought we were okay. I mean, I’ve been really busy with Cardiac and this new property in France that Mike and I are looking at...we’re recording a new album - we’ve already been working on the songs. The affair with Vicki was stupid. Really bad idea. And it’s destroyed my fucking marriage, so that’s on me. On Friday --”

“Yeah, how’d you and Victoria Rivera meet?” I ask. 

“Is that really relevant?” His question is tinged with desperation.

I level a stare at him. “Yes.”

He clasps his hands together and clears his throat. “You know her dad works for me. She comes around the club now and again. Then she started dating Mike. We hung out a few times.”

“And how’d it become a thing between you two?”

He rolled his head to one side and then back, lifting his shoulders. “Look, it was a mutual attraction. I tried to ignore it. I could tell she was feeling it. Mike didn’t care.”

“So Mike Haverly knew?”

“I didn’t tell him outright, but I think he knew somethin’ was up.”

“And Tansy Winters?” I ask.

“Tansy Winters?”

“You and Tansy good friends?”

“Not especially. Been at some of the same events. She’s a fan of the music.”

“But Tansy knew about you two?”

“Yeah. She covered for us once at a party.”

“I didn’t think you were the partying type.”

“Yeah. I don’t smoke or do drugs or drink. I was there long enough to make an appearance, and Victoria showed up. They’re tight.” He worked his lips before saying, “Tansy helped us get some time alone.”

“Was it just sex, or did you care for her?” I ask. I place a photo of Victoria in front of him. She smiles at the camera, eyes shining, some kind of white blossom in her hair. For a second as the light hits the flower, it looks grey. I think of the Asphodel bloom, populous in the Asphodel Fields of mythology. 

Jules stares at her photo. “I... It - it started as sex. I cared for her, though. It was hard not to. She was like a force of nature.” He lowers his eyes. “She was too good.” He says it so quietly I almost don’t catch it.

“What do you mean by ‘too good?’”

He looks at me, his eyes shimmering. “Am I gonna need a lawyer?”

“Are you?” I ask. “We haven’t even got to Friday night. Suppose you tell us what happened there.”

He touches the photo, just the corner, with the pad of his forefinger. I resist the urge to grab it and break it. “Sometimes I go out to this cabin outside the city. It’s just a place to gather my thoughts and play some music. Relax without all the noise.” He licks his lips. “I was there.”

“Yeah? Any witnesses?”

“No,” he says.

“And why didn’t you tell us this before?”

“I, um, got my nights mixed up. It was stupid. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Huh,” I say. “So, you’re telling us that you got your nights mixed up, you were cheating on your wife, and then your mistress turns up dead on the night you happen to have no alibi?”

He cringes, his eyes meeting mine. Fear pools there. 

“Why don’t you tell us what really happened?” Sally says. I can tell that shine in her eyes has gone now that she sees Jules Mathison isn’t the indie rock god we all thought he was. Never meet your idols, right? Goes for celebrity heartthrobs, too.

“I don’t know what you mean, I -”

“Was it because she was pregnant?”

“What?” he says, though it comes out as a gasp of air more than a fully formed word. “Vicki was pregnant?” He stands from his chair so quickly it scrapes with a ringing echo against the walls, saying, “I am not going to take the fall for this -”

We rise, too, and I’m already saying, “Sit down, Mr Mathison -” when the door opens.

The three of us glance towards it.

DCI McGill. “Inspector Lestrade, Sergeant Donovan, come out here please.” He gives Jules Mathison a look. “Your barrister’s here,” he says with a pointed growl as a sleek, tall bloke with legs that go on for days enters the room. His proud carriage makes me think of Mycroft for a moment, except his face is somehow unfriendlier. Purposely pointed with disgust and anger.

Like he’s not a fan of Jules.

“But -” Jules says.

“Sit down, Mr Mathison,” Tall Angry Barrister says.

Sally and I make our way out the door, not before tossing a look back at Jules, who stares at the lawyer in disbelief. He sits.

The DCI shuts the door behind us. He pulls off his glasses, peers through them, and then places them back on his face. We wait.

“I want an arrest, Lestrade,” McGill says. “Jules Mathison has no alibi and he has a motive - to hide his affair from his wife. You’ve already got all the info you need. Make the arrest. The only other suspect we have is the father, and what we don’t have there is motive.” 

I give a slow nod. “Got it, sir.” It’s true. We don’t have anything else. And now this slick barrister - and who called him in? - is with Mathison, and we’ve got to move fast. We didn’t get a confession, but we’ve got circumstantial evidence. Enough to hold him for a while. Get warrants on his properties. Get Technical to look at CCTV again and see if we can spot him anywhere near there on that night. Anything that puts him back in London and not some cabin out in the middle of nowhere.

And we still have the question of who has keys to the pyrotechnics cabinet. Assuming it’s a locked cabinet at all. 

“It would be my pleasure to arrest him,” Sally says from next to me. “We could start with Technical; see if we can place him in London that night.”

My face snaps to hers. She looks straight at McGill, pretending, I think, to not see my reaction. 

“Well, then,” I say, my hands clasped behind my back and my jaw set. “Hop to it, Sergeant.”

Sally flinches. Goes back into the room without so much as a glance at either of us.

“She’s going places, Lestrade,” McGill says. I know he isn’t trying to be unkind - it’s a warning. Get in line, or see her get ahead of me in the queue. 

I know her itching to climb the career ladder is part of why she had it in for Sherlock. And why she complained about my consulting with him to the higher-ups.

“I certainly wouldn’t call her anything but ambitious,” I say. “I’ve got paperwork to do.”

McGill nods. I step away.

* * *

Victoria’s mouth opens and wet, black feathers spew forth like a soot-colored sludge, sliding down the front of her body. A loud, high-pitched and resonant sound like an ambulance siren emerges from her throat, but without the whooping rise and fall. It’s flat, ongoing, a klaxon of canorous alarm. It devolves into raging screams. She screams and screams and screams. I lift my arms, whether to silence her or to comfort her I can’t say as panic bubbles in my chest. She stomps forward, anger twisting her face - I back up. I trip, and she’s got me, grabs me around the neck as her jaw stretches further like something serpentine and ravenous. A flicker of flame appears in the darkness of her throat as she forces me to the ground, her mouth coming to swallow me whole, to engulf me and entrap me in the abyss of her stretching and distending gut. 

I jerk awake, my throat sore. My eyes wet. I scrabble for the light and watch the shadows in the room recede. Her anger seethes below my skin. Her impatience rattles around me like a pinball in a machine. 

“Fucking Hell, Victoria, you could just tell me.” I scrub a hand over my face. I can’t quite shake the nervy tingle in my spine, even as the anger and impatience ebb. 

I know I’m missing something. Yeah, we don’t really have enough evidence to charge Mathison, but the teams will be busying themselves on it, falling over themselves to find any bit of evidence that puts Mathison at the scene. We’ll only be able to talk to him with the Tall Angry Barrister there, and that’s never a good bet for an easy confession. 

I’m missing something. This is bigger than what it looks like. And I can’t see it. Can’t fucking see it. I need - I need -

“Sherlock,” I say aloud. 

The rags must be having a field day. I haven’t looked. We arrested Mathison yesterday on suspicion of murder, with just enough time for the tabloids to change their covers and go with this story. I can just see the headlines:  _ Music star’s mistress found dead; police baffled.  _

But I’m missing something. Victoria’s upset. Her message seems clear to me: we’ve got the wrong guy.

Sherlock would see whatever it is I missed. Or that bloody brother of his.

Mycroft.

I remember it now, in the early days. Standing at a scene in an alley with a body. Sherlock berating Anderson. A black sedan had dropped Sherlock off at one end of the alleyway and waited. Mycroft emerged - lanky, polished, aloof. He stood outside of the dingy mouth of the alley, leaning on his umbrella, half-ignoring the crime scene only metres away. 

“Mycroft needs glasses and even he could tell the cause of death from where he’s standing,” Sherlock had snapped out.

“He a freak like you?” Sally had sniped.

At that second, something had grabbed Sherlock’s attention. He stood stock-still, staring, his mind off and away. Distracted. And still, he answered the question as if without thinking: “Mycroft is better. Who reported the body?” And off he went, reeling out a string of words, piecing together the actions that must have taken place for that dumped body to be dumped there with no one noticing.

_ Mycroft is better. _

It’s true. Mycroft and I began meeting monthly where I filled him in on how Sherlock was doing. He’d offered me money, and I told him he could shove it up his arse. But the meetings after that, the laughs over tea and the back and forth swaps of a cigarette. Both of us trying to quit and then failing.

I did visit his office shortly after the funeral. His leggy assistant said he had asked for privacy. I shot him a text with condolences and left it at that. Another fallen pin in the bowling ball wreck of my life at that point. I should have said sorry in that text, though. Sorry I was part of the group of arresting officers. Sorry I didn’t rein in Sally and Anderson before they began their stupid machinations. Maybe I should have shot Moriarty when I had a chance. I should have told Mycroft…

_ What? That you liked him? _

Jesus. Pathetic.

I stare at the lamplight until my eyes hurt. I lay back against the covers. Victoria’s face seems to hover above.

Somehow, against all the odds, I drift off.

I dream of Mycroft, umbrella in hand. Behind him is a small girl in a light blue nightgown. Her face is burnt. Her hair hangs like singed curtains. She follows him wherever he goes. Sometimes he looks back at her and, like Orpheus looking back at Eurydice, she fades from view.

* * *

I find myself bent over drawing paper that morning, sketching Mycroft. The curve of thin lips in a sardonic smile, the piercing eyes staring from the page, and the erect posture of a proud man. Behind him, I draw the burned girl. It’s a mystery, like none I’ve dreamed of before. I’m not sure how this has come to me, except that she belongs to him somehow. Maybe she follows him. 

When I finish, I tuck it into my sketchpad and place it on the desk. I get dressed and head out to my little slip of solace - the tiny cafe is just opening. Pete gives me a grunting welcome and hands me my usual.

When Sherlock was alive and I needed a conversation with Mycroft, I would stand out on the corner, either the one outside my flat or one outside New Scotland Yard. I would stand in full view of the CCTV, and I would draw out a cigarette and smoke it in my left hand. In time, a black sedan would pull up. 

I think about this as I sit, coffee on the table in front of me. I’ve been staring at the tabloids with news of Jules’ arrest splashed all over them. A photo of Victoria Rivera. Not at all the raging Fury she was in my dream the night before, but rather like a brilliant May Queen with that little blossom in her glossy hair. It’s early yet, but Mycroft always struck me as an early riser.

I leave the coffee shop and head to the corner. The sun is lifting into the autumn sky, a persistent beacon and overlord of the daily grind. I pull out the cigarette, and light it, holding it in my left hand. I let it burn down without so much as an inhale. I light another. Resist taking a drag. I have at least two hours before I need to report to work. I’ll stand here as long as I have to wait.

Forty-five minutes later, a shiny black sedan pulls up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every time I read that last paragraph, I think: "Player 2 has entered the game."


	8. A Study in Chiaroscuro

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in posting. This week was very busy!

I have the files tucked under my arm. I shouldn’t be doing this - consulting with someone. And another Holmes? Jesus. But I need some bloody sleep. 

Duncan is the driver. He’s a large man, beefy-armed and broad shouldered, with a handlebar moustache. His dark hair is pulled back in a neat ponytail. “Inspector,” he says with a twinkle in his eyes. “Good to see you again.”

I grin, glad to see him. “It is, Duncan. How’re things?”

“Well enough,” he says. He opens the door. 

Duncan and Omar are two of Mycroft’s most trusted people and were the only ones who would pick me up from the kerb. I only know that they are among Mycroft’s most trusted because Mycroft himself told me. They and Anthea are his go-to team, and anything involving me or Sherlock is handled by one of them. 

When Duncan drops me off at Whitehall, Mycroft’s assistant, Anthea, is waiting.

“Detective Inspector Lestrade,” she says warmly. She looks the same - gorgeous, with thick dark tresses and beautiful blue eyes. A body like a modern-day Venus and all that. Not that I’d ever tell her. I get the feeling she could drop me on my back so quick I’d think I’d time-travelled.

“Anthea, it’s good to see you,” I say. 

“Right this way.” 

My hands get clammy as we walk along the corridors. I try to keep my breathing even, and my heart rate down. The fact that Mycroft has even agreed to see me is surprising. I’m partly elated and partly nervous - afraid that he’ll just laugh me right out of the office. I mean, his brother died because of my co-workers, and now I’m coming to him for help? It’s gonna be awkward. But some part of me is glad to see him, flickers with hope that we can let bygones be bygones, and by some miracle, we can be friends again.

Maybe I’ll get to apologise. 

Anthea leads the way. She uses a key in the lift to access an upper floor. We walk down the hall. She opens a door to the same small, shadowy office I’ve seen before. The man himself sits at the desk, glancing over something on a laptop. His eyes flick to the door when we enter.

He stands. The fluid sweep of movement with that controlled confidence of his - it does things to me. Makes me think of what it would be like to press him against the wall, or over that desk. Inhale his cologne. Feel the warmth of him against me... It’s incendiary. 

“Inspector Lestrade, what a surprise.” His voice propels my heart into a little flip. His smile might even be genuine, a curious quirk of the lips that matches a sparkle in his blue-grey eyes. I can’t help but smile back at him, and something in my chest loosens. 

It’s like nothing has changed. I’m just back in his office to meet and to talk, admiring how his hair is in the same perfectly ironed back style. I’m not sure how he assembles these immaculate suits he wears. He must spend hours deciding on fabrics and having them made and then figuring out which to wear on what day. Sure, he’s got a tailor. But who looks him over in the morning before he’s headed out? 

Actually, the idea of someone else looking him over in the morning is not something I want to think about. “Hi, Mycroft. Long time, no see.”

He bobs his chin. “You’re trying to quit smoking again, Inspector.”

“Greg,” I say. “Yeah. Trying. Messed up once already this month.” I’m not sure what it is about him that makes me confess the small things. I’m quick to overshare with him sometimes. Hardly appropriate here today.

“To what do I owe this honour?” he says as he straightens the cuff of one sleeve. I’m glad he’s getting right to the point and saving me from myself.

“I need your help.”

“My help?” Mycroft tilts his head. “How can I be of service to the Met’s finest?”

I bark a laugh. “Hilarious. Certainly you know all of my cases are under review? As am I?”

“And yet you’re lead on the case for the murder of Victoria Rivera. How interesting.” 

Of course he knows.

“My name’s in the papers already? Bloody hell.”

“Quite.” He gestures to the chair across from him. “Care to sit down?”

I sit. “I’ve got a suspect in custody.”

“Yes. The known heartthrob Jules Mathison. The populace is so disappointed in his downfall.”

“Mycroft Holmes. Are you a fan of Last Heartbeat?” I give him a grin.

Mycroft sighs, though a smile tugs at the corner of his lips and his eyes glint. “Naturally,” he deadpans. “In fact, their last single gave me a case of arrhythmia.” 

I snort. Everything around me seems lighter all of a sudden, despite the darkness of this office. A set of skylights illuminate his desk like a checkerboard. His eyes shine as they lock on mine. It’s been so long since we’ve done this, and the bone-deep sensation of just how much I missed it comes crawling over me. 

“So how can I help you?” He leans back in his chair and steeples his fingers in a way that reminds me of Sherlock. 

“Well...I…” I am at a loss for words. How do I explain that I _know_ there’s something else to this case, something I’m missing, but I just can’t see it? Sherlock used to snarl at “gut feelings.” Which seems insane to me, because even scientists live by that leap of intuition. I think he did, too, he just didn’t frame it that way. “I don’t think Jules Mathison did it.”

Mycroft raises his eyebrows. “On what evidence?”

“All we’ve got on him is circumstantial. He didn’t even seem to know that she was pregnant.”

“She was pregnant?”

“That’s not in the papers yet?”

“No,” Mycroft says as he swivels slightly in his chair. “Of course, it’s the first day of the media circus.”

“Right. So, um...it seems to fit, yeah? Popular star like him, devoted husband, seemingly. Has an affair, mistress ends up pregnant. Could ruin his whole image, not to mention his marriage. So he offs her, right? It’s motive.”

“But you don’t believe it?”

“I…” I _know_ it. We’ve got the wrong guy and we’re about to tear up his life - we’ve already started. Picking at it like a seam coming undone. Ripping it further thread by thread. “It’s circumstantial. And the thing is, I know I must be missing something. Something that…” I duck my chin. Look up at him. “Something that Sherlock would have seen.”

Mycroft’s mouth flattens. His eyes seem to grow hardened, like two blue-grey pebbles. He doesn’t say anything.

“And, well...I know you’ve got the same skills he had, and I wonder if you might take a look for me. I’ve got the case file right here, I can talk to you about it… On the quiet, of course. McGill would have my guts for garters if he knew I came to you. But…” I waver. His expression hasn't changed. This was a big bloody mistake. Disappointment blooms deep in my belly.

“You’re desperate,” he says.

“Yeah. I am. I’m not going to put an innocent bloke behind bars.”

“Thanks to his own questionable decision-making - not of your doing.”

“Thanks for that, I guess. I just...don’t want to add to it.” And I want some sleep _._ “It’s been bothering me: the idea that we’re missing something.”

Mycroft stares at me as if considering my request - or who knows, maybe he’s deciding how to let me down gently. He’s picked up a fancy looking fountain pen from his desk, and he fiddles with it between his fingers. The office is silent aside from our breathing. I recall the quiet moments in our old meetings - they weren’t like this. They were comfortable, moments of respite in an otherwise too busy and too-often violent world. 

And a lot of those moments were full of potential. Like if I had said something - after the divorce. If I had invited him home with me for a drink. Maybe it would have led somewhere. I think we’d have done well together. Comfortable in our silences, cheerful in our banter. Probably explosive in the sack. Understanding about the long work hours each of us has got to do. 

No use thinking about it now. I’m not sure why I even entertain the thought. If I learnt anything from Cass, it’s that being with someone like me isn’t fun for another person. And really, someday? Someday I might lose control entirely. Float away forever.

“Listen, I’m sorry to bring Sherlock up like this. And I’m sorry to burst in on you like this after we haven’t talked in so long. And I’m sorry -”

“That’s quite enough on apologies,” Mycroft says. “No need to overdo it. I shall be happy to assist you.” He holds out a hand for the file. His hands are wonderfully long and graceful. Pale skin with slender knuckles. Manicured nails. 

I hand the case file over and then tuck my hand out of sight. I’m what I would call “peasant-stock.” Beefy, thick fingers. Sturdy. Movements are sometimes clumsy. Fumbling. Mostly economical. It’s my face that draws the eye. I don’t work out much - just enough. But in my life, I’ve depended a lot on just smiling at folks to get what I want. 

Mycroft Holmes seems immune to it, much to my dismay. Honesty is the way to get to him. Throws him off sometimes, I think, after the type of people he must have to work with in a delicate dance of politics and power. 

I watch as his eyes flick over the contents of the file. “Mm. That’s quite the name to live up to,” he says.

“Hm?”

“Victoria. To be named for a formidable English queen who ruled for over sixty-three years.” He flips a page in the file. “Or perhaps Saint Victoria - her corpse is preserved and on display in the Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. She was killed after spurning a pagan suitor. Apparently, her unwavering faith in Jesus Christ earned her a place in sainthood.” 

“Huh,” I say. Jesus. Another death. Another resurrection. To be honest, I could listen to Mycroft talk about whatever he wants to talk about all day. His voice is soothing. Almost musical. He speaks with deliberate diction, and it’s very sexy.

Mycroft pauses. Something strange passes across his face like he’s both angered and dismayed. His gaze cuts to mine. He shows me what he’s looking at by angling the file. It’s my sketches of the mask and the symbol. I’d slid them in there just on the off chance it would be something Mycroft would recognise.

“Where did you get this?” Mycroft asks.

I think quickly. “Saw it among some of her private things at her flat. Sketched it.”

“And not photographed it?”

“Didn’t think of that until later.”

“You’re lying,” Mycroft says as his eyebrows arch in a look of disappointment.

Honesty. Ha. 

I worry my lower lip with my teeth. My pulse quickens. Mycroft is, and Sherlock was, very shrewd. It was one of Sherlock’s gifts, and clearly, one of Mycroft’s. “Look. I can’t tell you my source. I know this has something to do with it; I just don’t know what.” I narrow my eyes at Mycroft. “And clearly you know something about these.”

Mycroft closes the file, his mouth like a line drawn in the sand. “I’ll need to be involved in this case.”

“What? Like your people are taking over?” That’s the last thing I want. 

“No. I, my person, will now be involved in this case.”

“As?”

“A consultant.”

“I already got in trouble for that once.” I expect Mycroft to flinch, but he doesn’t. His stone-blue eyes are coolly fixed on mine, and the only indication that he’s disturbed is the pull of muscles around his mouth. 

“Yet you’re here anyway,” Mycroft says.

“Yeah. I am. But not to get you formally in on this case.”

“I will pull the necessary strings. You needn’t concern yourself.”

“Yeah, because all I need is another _Holmes_ on one of my cases. Officially. Like my career can handle that at this point.”

“So you thought you’d slink into this office like a shadow, get my expertise, and slink out, claim the credit for yourself?”

“I don’t want credit!” I can’t help my voice raising. “I never wanted credit! Sherlock helped me, and John gave him the credit on that blog, and I was fine with that. I never asked for credit. He did solid work. I was proud to have him on my team.”

Mycroft’s mouth changes then. Almost a smile. A tightness that I wasn’t aware of around his eyes has melted. Softened. 

I press. “Look. I just want the case solved. That’s all. And I want it done right. I don’t want to put some bloke away who didn’t do it, and some murderer out enjoying the broad light of day. It isn’t...it isn’t right.”

“I can see you’re losing sleep over this.” Of course, Mycroft would dial in on that. I’m embarrassed to be here looking like shit, but as everyone in this room knows, I’m desperate.

I let out a loud exhale. “Yeah. I am. So, can you help? Can you tell me anything? Starting with that mask and the symbol. Stuff gives me nightmares.” It always helps to lend out a nugget of truth in a lie.

Mycroft tilts his head. “I will help you. If it’ll let you sleep at night.” He sits up straight, leans over the desk. “I’ll get the access I need without alerting your superiors. I promise you, I won’t endanger your career.”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding as tension slips from my shoulders. “Thank you. Um. That file is a copy. The real one’s at work.”

“Thank you,” Mycroft says. “I won’t allow anyone else to see it, of course. You shall have my discretion.”

It’s like an actual weight lifts from me. A teammate. I’ve got a teammate, and with all the starts and stops I’ve had with Sally and others lately, it’s such a good, warm feeling to have again. “That’s a relief, Mycroft.”

“I’ll have Duncan drive you back to New Scotland Yard.”

“Thanks.” Disappointment lodges in my chest. This meeting is at an end, but I hope I’ll get to see Mycroft again very soon. “But, um, are you sure there isn’t anything you can tell me now? About the mask and the symbol?”

“I need to check a few things first, and then I promise to tell you what I know.” He’s tapping his fancy pen again, and on his face is a genuine smile. Mycroft Holmes has a series of smiles - smug, condescending, amused, fake-and-I-want-you-to-know-it’s-fake, and truly fake but truly hard to tell. On occasion, I get to see the real one. It’s like peeking at something special, prying open a hard-shelled, ugly oyster and discovering a luminescent pearl.

“Okay then. I’ll talk to you later. You’ll call?” I almost visibly cringe at this, like I’m sixteen again and on a first date. 

Mycroft’s smile widens. “I will.”

I rise from the chair. 

“Greg,” Mycroft says. I look at him. He’s still smiling, though it’s smaller. “Victoria has one other meaning. It's the feminised version of Victor, and it is the Latin word that corresponds with the Greek Berenike, which means ‘she who brings victory.’” 

I glance down at the file. Think of Victoria’s face looking into mine. “Well, I hope that’s what we’ll get here - a victory.”

I leave, and though my chest feels like one of those plasma balls with the zips of electric light hitting the surface, I feel like I’m finally making headway on this case.


	9. Stippling

“So, we didn’t exactly find anything incriminating in his loft, but it’s a bit of a mess since Eliza Stewart was getting out of there like a bat out of hell,” Sally says. “Apparently she’s leaving Mathison, and trashing the place on her way out.”

“What about his cabin? Where he said he was that Friday night?” The chair creaks beneath my weight as I stretch my arms up overhead. I’ve spent all morning in my office combing through reports for another case, wanting to forget Victoria Rivera for an hour or so. A pressure at the back of my head suggests it hasn’t worked.

“The team’s there now. No sign of him having been there over the weekend, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot. Mathison didn’t even stop for petrol on the way there or on the way back.”

“So still no alibi?”

“Nothing. But nothing to say he was in that neighbourhood at the time of her death and the fire,” Sally leans against the desk, her arms crossed as she stares at the wall. 

“How much longer can we hold him?”

“Bail hearing is set for this afternoon. Wouldn’t be surprised if his fans crowdsource to get him out tonight.”

“Even after he broke their hearts by cheating on his wife?”

“Are you kidding? Now they all think they have a chance. Though, not everyone. There’s a bit of a movement going on.”

“What kind of movement?”

“Related to the MeToo Movement. The age gap between Victoria and Jules is a matter of concern to a lot of younger fans, and then, of course, her being dead and him being charged with the murder and all. Won’t be too long before it gets out that she was pregnant and then the media will have a bigger field day than they’re having already.”

“Christ. I’m surprised McGill isn’t here to chew me out yet.”

“You worry a lot about what McGill thinks.”

I don’t say anything. I disappointed my real father for years. Sally doesn’t know that some part of me sees McGill in a similar way - an authority figure whose approval I seek. I’m ashamed to recognise it about myself, to be honest.

Sally changes the topic. “Gotta wait ‘til we see what the teams come back with, I guess. But I think you’re in for a bit of a reprieve today. Word is that the chief’s out golfing.”

I goggle at her. “Seriously?”

She laughs. “Yeah. With some other bigwigs, I’m sure.”

“Is there no such thing as weekends?”

“Not for us.”

I lean my elbows on the desk. “I used to dream of getting to be DCI. That dream gets further and further away all the time.”

Sally doesn’t say anything. I realise I’ve likely shown too much of my hand to her. But maybe if I got DCI one day, she’d have my spot. I hope she sees it that way.

I check my watch. “Lunchtime. I’m heading out.”

“Okay big spender.” Sally winks as she pushes herself off the desk.

“What? You bringing in packed lunches again?” I say, as I rise from my chair.

“It’s the best way to save money and eat healthy, sir. You should try it.”

“If I die of a heart attack, you could get DI quicker,” I say.

Sally doesn’t say anything. Just gives a nervous sounding laugh and strolls through the office door. 

Yeah. Just as I thought.

My mobile rings. _Mycroft Holmes._

“Lestrade,” I say.

“Inspector Lestrade,” says Mycroft in that mellifluous voice of his. I ignore the quickening of my pulse. “Do you have a moment?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Are you alone?”

I look around the office as if anyone else is going to be there. Shut the door. “Yeah.”

A pause. A sigh. “I believe this case was assigned to you for one reason, and one reason only. To cause your suspension or demotion. More likely the latter. I thought I should warn you to step carefully.”

I sink into my chair as my heart thuds. “How - what have you found out?”

“I’m not at liberty to share my sources,” Mycroft says. “I only wish to warn you.”

I swallow. My throat is dry. As dry as the nightmares with Victoria where everything is burning and the heat has sucked all moisture from the air, and eventually, the soft tissues of my throat. “Thanks for telling me.”

“This information shocks you?”

“I - well, I suspected that some people have it out for me. But I’m a solid DI. Even without Sherlock, my solve rate has always been respectable. There’s...there’s just no reason for it.” Unless you stood to benefit like Sally did, or something along those lines.

“Ah.” I hear him draw a breath. I can picture him in his office. Leaning over his desk with the mobile pressed to his ear, his fingers wrapped around it. “I apologise for being the one to deliver such news. I would never wish to upset you.”

The small admission at the end renews a little light inside my chest. “Yeah. Thanks. I, um...listen, we do need to talk.” I want him to tell me how he knows about the symbol and the mask. It’s been eating at me whenever I happen to think of it. “Can I invite you over to my place? For dinner? Nothing fancy. Simple. Just to talk.” My heart rate increases, even though this is just for work. And we have to go somewhere covert since no one can know I’m consulting with Mycroft Holmes.

A little intake of breath. “Yes. I happen to be free tonight.”

My ears burn at the tips. _It’s not a date._ “Great. I should get out of here by 5:30. Seven okay?”

“Perfect,” Mycroft says. 

* * *

“Welcome to my humble abode,” I say, as I open the door wide for Mycroft. “And I stress the word ‘humble.’”

Mycroft looks out of place. He’s wearing a grey suit with a light herringbone pattern, a burgundy brocade waistcoat with a matching pocket-square, and a light grey tie adorned with a silver tie pin. It’s a bit jarring against the bachelor pad that has become my home, with all of its IKEA furnishings and bare walls. Boxes of books in one corner that have yet to go on a shelf. A shelf I have yet to purchase. Mycroft probably lives in a carefully curated home with not a thing out of place.

Still, it feels good to see him. 

“Thank you for inviting me,” Mycroft says. “I realise this is a business meeting, but er, I brought…” He holds up a bottle of wine. Red. Some gold-edged label with an ostentatious script.

“Thanks,” I say as I grab the bottle. _He brought wine._ I had to restrain a smile from breaking out across my face. I shouldn’t read into it. His mum probably brought him up with the rule that you never went to someone’s home for dinner empty-handed. It’d be rude. “Um, like I said. Dinner’s simple. But this will dress it up a bit. Thanks.”

“I think, so long as dinner isn’t spaghetti hoops, we’ll do just fine.”

“Oh,” I say, and pretend to look crestfallen. “I guess we’ll have to order in because I’ve got nothing in my cupboards but spaghetti hoops.”

A laugh slips from Mycroft’s lips. He almost seems surprised by it. I can’t help but feel a little proud that I did that. 

“I’ll just get a couple glasses. Plastic okay? It’s how I normally drink my Panda Pops.”

“You enjoy vexing me,” Mycroft says, smiling. 

“It’s nice to see you smile,” I say. I turn away before he can see the pink flush I can feel burgeoning on my cheeks. 

Luckily, the kitchen’s been entirely unpacked and it doesn’t take me too long to find the wine glasses. I uncork the bottle and pour the wine after wiping the dust from the glasses.

“I threw together a stir-fry, and cooked up some rice,” I say, as Mycroft joins me in the kitchen. 

“Thank you, Greg. I’m sure it’ll be wonderful.”

I hand him one of the glasses. I swirl the liquid in my glass and inhale the fragrant notes.

“Shall we toast?” Mycroft says.

I give a little laugh. “To me keeping my job, hopefully.”

Mycroft’s smile grows warmer. “To you keeping your job.” We bump the glasses. “Greg, as you know, my reach is long.”

“Sherlock did say you were the British Government itself.”

“He...overstresses my position.” Mycroft sips his wine. “I only mean to say that I could have interfered with the processes underway at the Met at that time, particularly in regards to Sherlock’s participation in your cases. I...did not act, as I predicted that if I did interfere, it would cast more doubt and suspicion on his role, and on yours. I hope...I hope you can understand that.”

I let the wine roll across my tongue as I think about it. Consider. Swallow. “You know, Mycroft, I appreciate you saying that. I understand.”

Mycroft twirls his glass between a finger and his thumb. “If it came to you losing your job…”

My chest clenches at the thought of losing my job. The spirits that would hammer at the door of my dreams, shoving around inside my head, pushing me until I wasn’t even able to function in the real world, or until I possibly floated right out of my body, unable to recover. _I’m not even there_... “Uh. I can’t,” I say. I turn away from him so he can’t see my face. “It can’t happen.” My voice croaks.

Mycroft clears his throat. “I could possibly prevent that, if you’d…”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” I work my throat muscles as ice seems to flow through my veins. “If we solve this case, they can’t touch me. They can’t blame me for arresting the wrong guy or botching the case in any way, and if they haven’t found anything wrong with any of the cases I did with Sherlock, they can’t touch me. That’s what I have to do.” I set my shoulders back. “It won’t come to needing your interference on my behalf.”

I turn to face him. His expression reminds me of the first time I met him. The mysterious elder brother whose number I had to call when Sherlock was in hospital. His face is not quite as animated, not quite as desperate as it was then. But most definitely concerned. 

Touched, I reach a hand out and lay it on his arm. “Thank you,” I say.

Mycroft’s cheeks are pink. “Of course. You were always good to Sherlock. I would, of course, repay you in kind.”

I pull my hand away. Of course. It’s my kindness to Sherlock that has motivated Mycroft to offer his help. It has nothing to do with the relationship we once had. I was merely Sherlock’s handler, just as the berk once accused me of being. “Yeah,” I say. “Why don’t we serve up dinner? Then we’ll talk shop.”

Mycroft looks at the food as he steps away. “How may I be of service?”

Together we put it on plates and sit at the dining table. It’s a simple square, stained to look like dark wood. I stare at the grain, as we don’t say anything. Trying not to think of what I’ve come to accept as what will probably be my final end: losing a battle of possession with a spirit. Me floating away and never recovering the body that is mine. _You want him to float away?_

After a while, Mycroft makes a kind remark on the food and I thank him. I drink more wine. Remark on the flavour. That brightens him for a moment as he talks about grape varietals and a favoured winery of his. This guy could probably talk for hours about something as boring as concrete and I’d listen. 

Just as I clear the dishes, the doorbell rings. I glance at Mycroft. 

“Are you expecting someone?” Mycroft asks.

“No,” I say. “Wait here.”

I walk to the door and open it. Sally stands in the hall, dressed in a stylish overcoat, black heels, and a sequined skirt. “You weren’t answering your mobile,” she says. “And I happened to be in the neighbourhood down at that Indian place with Ted. I just got notice: Mathison’s killed himself in jail.”

I jerk back. “What?” Mathison? _But...he wasn’t our guy._

“Yeah. They didn’t take the drawstring from the pants he was wearing below his trousers.”

I stare in disbelief. He...he wasn’t even the right guy. “How...but he wasn’t a suicide risk.”

“I dunno,” she says and shrugs. “Now I think about it, we probably should have considered it. His wife’s leaving him. He’s been accused of murdering his pregnant mistress. His life could possibly be in ruins, along with his career.” She looks down at the floor. “Maybe we made a mistake in not thinking to do it.”

“He hung himself with the drawstring of his pants?” I say, maybe a little too loudly. A buzzing seems to fill the room. “Pants with drawstrings?”

“I...I guess he had jogging bottoms on as pants beneath his trousers?”

“This makes him look guilty as hell,” I say. I bring my hands up to my head.

“It does,” she says. “It definitely does.”

A noise, like something falling, sounds behind me.

Sally looks past me. “You got someone here?”

“Telly’s on low,” I say and scrub one hand over my face. “Am I keeping you from Ted?”

“He’s waiting in the car. I just...thought you should know.”

“We’ll have to go in early. They may just as well pin this murder on him and close the case.”

“Wouldn’t it be a good thing to close the case?”

“Not if he wasn’t the murderer,” I say, staring at her hard.

She sets her jaw. “Okay. Point taken. You really don’t think it was him?”

“He didn’t even know she was pregnant. Have we looked closely enough at the wife’s alibi? What’s Tansy Winters hiding? What’s she so afraid of?”

“I - I don’t know,” Sally says, exasperation lacing her tone. 

“Right. So let’s make sure we’re pinning it on the right guy instead of just pinning it on him because he’s dead and it makes all our lives easier.”

She frowns at me, her brow furrowing. “If you say it wasn’t him, Greg, I believe you. We’ll work on it. Tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Goodnight.”

“Night.” She sounds almost hurt as she turns away.

“Sally?”

“Yeah?” she says.

“I’ve got a temper. Sorry. I appreciate you coming here to tell me.”

She gives me a half-genuine smile. “Sure. See you tomorrow.”

“See you.”

I close the door and walk down the hall to the sitting room. Mycroft is there, a white dishcloth in hand, mopping up spilt wine. Papers from the desk have fallen to the floor, spread like a tossed deck of cards.

“So sorry, terribly clumsy of me,” Mycroft says.

I pause when I realise what he’s knocked over. My sketches. Victoria. The masked man. Sheets I had concealed on the desk, inside the pad. 

The sketches of Sherlock. Who never appeared to me no matter how many times I sat down and sketched him.

Others, too. Doris Evans. The necklace. The case of Olive Hinckley and the building where she was found, the basement flooded and the wall crumbling, close to the Thames. A river ran around her bloated corpse in my sketch. Joshua Holden, and the wounds on his body created with a fisherman’s knife. They were placed in the pattern of the stigmata, which led to the arrest of the reverend who did it. 

The burned girl that follows Mycroft in my dreams. I drew her only this morning while thinking about our potential alliance.

Mycroft is pointedly not looking at the drawings, which tells me he’s seen them. Looked at all of them. Why was he even at my desk at all?

“Mycroft,” I say.

Mycroft pauses. He rolls the soaked dishcloth into a ball. Picks up the wine glass and stands. Not looking at me. “You have quite an interesting hobby. I knew, despite rarely seeing you hold them, that you must have spent quite a lot of time with pen and paper.”

“How’d you know that?” I ask.

“Your right ring finger. The callus over the top knuckle, just venturing on the inner side of your finger. Suggests many years of a writing implement having rested there, having moved there.” His gaze sweeps toward the drawings. “This, I did not predict, though.”

My cheeks burn. “Did you - did you knock them over on purpose? Trying to...figure out my source for the mask and the symbol? Snooping?”

Mycroft’s eyes snap to mine. He doesn’t say anything. He’s been caught red-handed, and thank the gods he’s not going to prevaricate or try to weasel his way out of it. It’s almost refreshing. 

He points a finger at the small girl looking over his shoulder in the one and only sketch of him. “Who is she supposed to be?”

I level a gaze at him. I’m feeling reckless. One thing about having this “gift,” is that it gets lonely. It’s hard. My dad and Grandnan knew, of course. My wife. She thought it was “cool” at first, but then it alternately scared her and exhausted her. “Why don’t you tell me?”

His eyes widen. “What do you mean by that?”

“She’s yours,” I say. “Your...familiar, or follower, or...haunt.”

“ _Haunt?_ ” Mycroft says, his voice incredulous, and his eyes whitening.

“I dreamt of her,” I say. “She follows you, and I think...I think she might have followed Sherlock once.” I got that sense while drawing her with Mycroft. “She’s young. Just a little child. But she’s...frightening, I think. Has power. And she’s not asking for my help, but she is lingering nonetheless. She’s all burnt up - ”

“Stop.” Mycroft’s voice is harsh. Hard. His pupils have shrunk and his face has gone slack. I’ve never seen Mycroft Holmes panicked. I’ve seen him concerned, I’ve seen him upset, and I’ve seen him angry and exasperated. Now, he’s….afraid. “Who told you? Sherlock?”

“Told me what?” The hairs across my neck and back stand on end. The nervy edge of a fight coming on. 

“Who gave you that information?” His voice is thunderous, and his face has morphed into one of hatred. I almost flinch beneath his gaze, but I hold it. I’m no wilting flower. I’m mother-fucking Greg Lestrade.

“You did. Or she did. I’m not sure how it all works.” I almost delight in confusing him - I watch his brow make tiny micromovements as he tries to discern whatever ‘game’ he thinks I’m playing. 

“This isn’t a game,” he says. I don’t know how he manages to read my thoughts so often.

“I’m not playing,” I say. “I’m telling you.” Because it’s hard. It’s lonely. It’s helped to ruin my closest friendships and my marriage. It estranged me from my father. And soon enough, it’ll push Mycroft Holmes out of my life, too. “I dream things. Sometimes, I draw things. It’s like something enters me, and I can’t help it. I can’t stop myself.” I swallow, because this is the truly frightening part. “It’s like I’m not even there.” 

_I’m not even there._

Mycroft’s face contorts into a look of disgust. “You maintain that you have some sort of extrasensory perception, and you expect me to believe it?”

“How else would I know about her?” I say as I point to the drawing. Mycroft flinches on _her._

“Then, do you know her name?” he asks.

I shake my head no. “She didn’t speak. She only follows you around.”

His face pales. Then hardens again as he places the wine glass on the desk with a _thud_ and drops the dishcloth beside it. “Greg Lestrade, so help me, I -”

“I don’t know, okay!” I yell. “It’s been with me all my life, and it’s the most horrible thing, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone!” 

Mycroft stares at me. “And Sherlock? He visited you in your dreams, too?”

I deflate. It kills me to answer. “No. I wanted him to. I...I would go to Barts, where he fell. I’d stand by the spot, the exact spot, and get nothing. I even went up to the roof and stood at the edge. I’ve been to his grave. Lookin’ like an idiot carrying around a drawing pad. I’ve told him to come. I’ve asked him to come. In hope he’d hear me somehow.” I gesture to the drawings of his face. “He’s never come. So, maybe he’s moved on to wherever people go? I don’t know. I had hoped - well, I hoped. But the ones I want to visit me never do.” For a second, I remember my mother’s picture. I keep exactly one wallet-sized photo in a box in the bedroom closet. Billie Lestrade nee Sullivan. Big smile and curly hair. 

Grandnan, too. I thought she’d come. She never did. Tristan’s the only one who came - and I didn’t even know he was dead when he did - and derailed me from a path of self-destruction.

“I sat around and drew Sherlock. Sometimes, I can get the dead to visit when I sit around and draw them. He never came.” Somehow I feel like I should apologise to Mycroft for this one. I lift my shoulders and step forward to pick the drawings up. Mycroft steps back. 

It’s fine. It’s what I expected. Get it over with now. After Cass, I did give myself a talking-to. That it was better for someone like me to be alone. My attraction to Mycroft wasn’t really appropriate, anyway.

I find myself babbling. “Grandnan was...well, she was what she called a medium. When I was a kid, she’d do séances and readings… I know she spent time in America before she came back to the UK and got married. Was part of the spiritualist movement in America, and got into it here, too. Had my dad. My dad never could understand it, and though my nan tried to teach me what she knew, my dad couldn’t stand it. And after she died -” my heart clenches as I draw in a lungful of air, “- that was it. I was maybe ten and I was...anyway these spirits kept asking me for help and I’d try to help them.” A memory of Tristan’s smiling face slips through my mind. “Eventually it seemed like going into police work was the way to help them. Otherwise, I’d get no sleep.” I shuffle the drawings back inside the pad that had been sitting on the desk. “When I met Sherlock...fuck, he was a godsend. I actually got regular sleep for once.” 

Mycroft’s footsteps sound, leading away from me towards the door. When it shuts behind him, I let the pad slip from my hands. The pages fan around me on the floor. There’ll be no sleep tonight.


	10. Limned in Light

“You look like hell,” Sally says as she approaches me in the car park.

“Thanks,” I say. I brush a hand through my hair. “More coffee. I’ll be right as rain.”

“You need actual sleep.” She hovers. “You know, I do worry about you.”

“Do you?” As soon as I say it, I know it’s unnecessary. Sally may want to advance her career and might be a little cutthroat about it from time to time, but I think she actually does care for me. She saw Sherlock as a threat - not just to her position, but to mine. She might have let her jealousy and dislike blind her, but she’s human after all. “Sorry. I’m a fucking bear with no sleep like this.” The nightmares hadn’t been particularly frightening. Just off-putting. Vicki weeping. On her knees in the middle of an ash-filled meadow. Nothing in sight but a gnarled, old tree with nary a leaf. 

“You know McGill is going to ask you to do what you can to close this case as soon as possible. The vultures are at the door.” She indicates the reporters by the literal doors. Lucky for us, we haven’t had to deal with too many of them directly. McGill’s been doing all the press on my behalf ever since Sherlock’s downfall. Maybe I shouldn’t say ‘downfall.’

“Yeah, yeah. We get anything on the tip line?”

“Nothing aside from your usual bunch of nutters.”

“Great.” I rub my hand over the stubble of my jaw. Shaving had seemed pointless this morning, but now that I think of it, I probably should have done, if only to look a little less haggard. My stomach’s still in knots over last night, and my heartburn is out of control. Antacids are truly a gift.

“Well, let’s get to work,” Sally says, almost brightly.

“Yeah,” I say and follow her to the side door.

* * *

The whole day is a bust. We combed through the evidence, the CCTV, the phone records - which proved the affair - and still we’ve got nothing to indicate anyone else. No mask. No symbol. Eliza Stewart appeared on the telly, with a tear-stained face and a choked statement about how though she was angered by his betrayal, she had long loved her husband and didn’t believe him to be a murderer.

I’m home now and feeling unproductive. A boat without an oar.

“I need more, Vicki,” I mumble as I begin getting out the paper and the pencil and the candle. The air seems abuzz around me. I know she isn’t far. This might be my least favourite thing to do in the world, but it’s necessary. “I need you to show me something more, or I can’t help you.” I light the candle, blow out the match, and pick up the pencil. My hand is steady, and my intention is clear - the things my nan trained me in. Be receptive. Be a vessel. Let it happen. Let the fear float away - don’t hold onto it. Note it, and let it go. 

Let it go. 

I begin by drawing the pointed features of her face, and the sweep of her hair. And then I’m gone…

_I’m not even there._

A knock at the door pulls me back. The candle has burned low. I look down, let the pencil drop from my fingers. I’ve sketched a church, or part of it, anyway. The spire is the most detailed, rising above a shingled roof. I get the sense that the church is white, and something goes on there that Vicki knows about. Something sinister.

The knock sounds again, with more urgency. 

In a daze, I walk to the door and unlock it.

I’m somewhat surprised to see Mycroft on the other side, but it seems in line with how everything is going lately. Strange. Unexpected.

“I’ve spent an entire twenty-four hours combing through your background, and your family’s background,” Mycroft says. 

“Oh,” I say. Of course. “Anything interesting?”

“Your grandmother, Calliope Sands, kept peculiar company in America. Returned here and married Rex Lestrade. Set up her practice and did well. Your father, Dunstan Lestrade, was a promising musician, but when your mother, Billie Sullivan, got pregnant, he married her and went into advertising. Grunt work at first, but he made his way up. He’s now retired, and an astounding alcoholic.”

My stomach turns. “Yeah. We don’t talk much.” We don’t talk at all. It’s nice to know he’s retired, but an alcoholic? I should have seen that coming. I haven’t spoken to him since before my marriage to Cass, and he was drunk. 

Mycroft’s lips are downturned at the corners. “Your grandmother practically raised you herself while your father advanced in his career at the advertising firm. Your mother...chose to have you instead of the cancer treatment that would have saved her life.”

My dad’s hissed words seep into my mind. _“You poisoned her. You killed her. Slowly. Took away the only thing good in my life.”_ His last words to me. It hurt to think that I’d never really had a mother, never knew my mother. But it hurts more to think that I had a father, but he never wanted me - not the way I was. 

“You really know how to kick a guy when he’s down, Mycroft,” I say. I’m sure he can hear the pain in the bluntness of my words. 

Mycroft grimaces. “I want to offer you an honesty of my own.”

“Yeah?” I say and lean against the doorframe. “Who is she? The burned girl.”

Mycroft purses his lips, inhales, seems to come to a decision. “Her name was Eurus. She was our younger sister.”

Wow. “What happened?”

“She was psychotic,” Mycroft says, and anger edges his voice. “She was hell-bent on torturing Sherlock when no one was watching, and I’m fairly certain she was responsible for the death of one of his playmates.” He heaves a sigh. “It - it changed him. And, when she burned down our family home, with her caught inside it, I have to admit, Greg. I was relieved to know she was gone from our lives forever. Our parents were devastated, but I was relieved.”

I take this in. Sherlock never mentioned a sister, but who would want to talk about a psychotic sibling who tortured you? “Everyone’s got secrets, huh?”

A flicker crosses Mycroft’s face. He licks his lips. “Yes. We all do.”

“Would you like to come in?” I hold the door open. Mycroft seems surprised - like he might take a step back. But he nods and follows me through to the sitting room. The candle is still burning on the table with the drawing lying beside it. 

“Are you...drawing, then?” His eyes skitter around the room, as if he’s trying to respect my privacy and not look at the page.

But it doesn’t matter to me anymore. I’m exhausted, and he already knows. He hasn’t run screaming. He’s here. Might as well go all in. Tell him what I’m doing and see what he does. “I’m trying to get more information from Victoria.” I rub my eyes. “I don’t recognise this church. Do you?”

Mycroft steps over to the table and picks up the drawing. “Afraid not.”

“Oh, fantastic.” I yawn. Everything in my mind is moving slow, like treacle. But he hasn’t run.

“No sleep, then?” Mycroft asks.

“Can’t really get it. Not until Vicki is satisfied.”

“Is that how it works?” His voice is soft, hesitant.

I push my chin at an angle with the heel of my hand, revelling in the resulting _crack_ of my neck. Mycroft cringes. “Basically. Otherwise, I go crazy.” _Lost forever. Have to keep the ghosts happy or I’m lost forever._

“Crazy?”

I stare at the sketches. “If I don’t...if I don’t help them, they’ll just keep pushing.” I pick the pencil up and begin putting things away. “And besides, it’s helping people. Even if they’re dead.”

Mycroft grabs my hand to stop me, and he takes the drawing pad from me. I let him. He leafs through the pages. Lets his gaze settle on each page before he moves to the next one. “You draw each of them like saints. Icons. It smacks of the reverence of Blake, even when the scene is terrible.” He looks at me as he places the pad on the table. “They’re beautiful.”

I smile. My heart beats louder. He’s here, and he’s not running. “Uh, thanks.”

“It’s late,” Mycroft says. “Eleven p.m. Why don’t you...why don’t you try to get some sleep. I can - if it would help, I can stay here. Stand guard. Talk with you about anything you might need to talk about.” He gestures helplessly, like a sad marionette. His usual demeanour, relaxed with his hands in his pockets, or leaning casual-like on his brolly, is gone.

I’m touched. Yeah, he might be here with an ulterior motive, too. Maybe spy on me while I sleep? Watch me during a visitation? Deduce how it’s all done? I could picture Sherlock looking at me like an experiment to provide data, data to parse. Mycroft might have the same inclination.

But then, does it really matter?

“Where will you sleep?” I say.

“I don’t have to -”

“The sofa, of course.” I head to the linen closet to put out some clean blankets and sheets. “Sorry. A bit slow right now.”

“No worries. I’ll be happy to stay on the sofa.”

I set the pile of linens on the end of the sofa. “It’s pretty comfy. Spent a few nights out here myself.” I rub my fingers over my clavicle, bared by the vee of my shirt. Mycroft’s eyes follow the movement. “Well, I’m off then.”

Mycroft pulls his gaze away and nods. “Goodnight, Greg. I shall sleep well here. But please, if you are disturbed tonight, wake me. We’ll talk through your...vision.”

“You’re kind,” I say. Cass had hated my nightmares. She didn’t want to hear about the awful things I saw at night. Not that I blame her. She didn’t choose my line of work. 

She didn’t even completely choose me. I mean, she chose me for marriage but kept choosing others, too.

I head for the bedroom before I can get stuck on that maudlin line of thought. 

As I settle in, the oddness of the evening strikes me - Mycroft Holmes is sleeping on my sofa. In his suit? A burble of laughter escapes me as I close my eyes. 

* * *

I’m back in the meadow of ashes. A single tree sits in the middle of the field. It has a thick, twisted trunk with deep-grooved bark, jutting roots like boulders rising from waves of ash, and narrow branches. Leaves cling to the gnarled twigs, pale green and new.

Movement to my right captures my attention. Vicki! She points wildly to a barn - a barn I’ve not seen before. It rises from the ash, almost the same grey, with wide boards and a shingled roof. Within it, I can hear the screaming. My heart drums in my chest. The screams fill my ears. Vicki grabs my wrist and her vice grip burns. I look down and her hand is no longer made of flesh, just the crooked bits of bone joined by tendons, and she yanks me towards the barn.

_I can’t go in, I can’t go in, I can’t go in._

The earth splits from the barn towards us. It’s like staring into the maw of an abyss - going on forever, a breath-sucking darkness that coagulates like blood in the lungs. 

I open my mouth and scream, except the only thing that comes out is a hiss of air. 

“Greg,” a voice says.

In the distance, a scream. Not the squall of the baby, but the wild bleating of a man.

I shoot up to sitting.

“Greg!” It’s Mycroft. The lamp is on, illuminating all the objects of my bedroom - the laundry on the dresser and the boxes in the corner. The outline of the window and the curtains. The door opened to the hallway. 

My body shudders, and my throat is sore. Mycroft’s hand is on one shoulder. “Good Lord, Greg. It’s Mycroft.” His voice is quiet. 

My eyes prickle. “Mycroft,” I say. _God, how I wish things were different._ It seems like the utmost importance that I tell him - tell him now. “We should have stayed friends. We should have become friends in the first place. It wasn’t just Sherlock. He wasn’t the only reason I’d see you.”

“Shh,” Mycroft says as he sits on the bed beside me. I lean into him, the warmth of his body as soothing as a cup of honeyed tea. “Just breathe, Greg. Breathe.”

“I’m sorry about Sherlock,” I say, my eyes wet. “I’m sorry I never saw him. I really tried. And I’m sorry about my part in his -”

“Don’t fret, Greg.” Mycroft’s arms slide around me, and I move into his embrace. “It’s nothing. I...never expected you to. Surely you must know that.”

“Sorry. ‘M a mess,” I say.

“Yes,” he says. “But I am here to help. Does it...did it help, when you were married, to have someone there for you in the night?” 

I snort. “I slept on the sofa more often than not in the last years. She hated my dreams.”

“Mm. Certainly a paragon of virtue, that woman.”

I almost laugh. The disdain in his voice entertains my sleep-addled brain. “Cass never really understood.”

“Well,” Mycroft says, his voice quiet and his words deliberate. Slow. “I would like to try and understand. I’m still...I want to know how it works, and that may never happen. But - if you would allow it, Greg, I should like to help you to carry this burden.”

I could cry. Maybe I am crying. I’m so discombobulated and disorientated, the lamp might not even be on and for all I know it’s daylight pouring through the window. “Stay here tonight. With me. In the bed.”

Mycroft stiffens. I almost take it back but he speaks. “You - you wouldn’t mind.”

“No. I’d like you to.” And if he hates it, I can claim temporary insanity in the morning.

“Alright then.” 

I slide over to make room. Mycroft slips beneath the covers. Our shoulders touch. 

“I normally can’t fall back asleep after I dream,” I say. I don’t mention that one time I did, and I dreamt of him and his dead sister.

“Do your best to try,” he says. “I’m right here.”

“Mm. Thank you.”

I drift off, dreamless. Unbelievable, dreamless sleep.

* * *

When I wake, it’s to find Mycroft looking at me. He’s on his side, his head on the pillow. His face seems touched with gentle concern. Pensive, perhaps.

“Hi,” I say, my voice raspy.

“Good morning,” he says softly.

Mortification sinks into my chest. “‘M sorry - ‘bout last night.”

“Don’t be,” he says. “We all have our demons.”

“Yeah,” I say, and clear my throat. “Some worse than others, I think.”

“Yours are certainly very active.”

I bark a light laugh. We’re silent a moment, looking at each other. “I, uh, appreciate you telling me about Eurus. I know that can’t have been easy.”

“Any easier than you telling me you have a direct phone line to the dead?”

I chuckle a little. “Wish it were a bit more direct sometimes. I. Um...well, you know. I can’t - I can’t summon spirits to me. I engage in a kind of conversation with the ones who contact me first. My nan could summon them, and drive them away. She never got the chance to teach me.” I slide one hand up to the edge of the pillow and pull at it. “She tried to teach me things when my dad wasn't around. He didn’t like it. What we did together.”

“Did it frighten him?”

“I think it more...I think in some ways it frightened him, but in other ways, I think he was jealous. I think…” And the more I think about it, the more certain I am. I can remember an old conversation with him when I asked him what it was like growing up with her. I had imagined all the fun - colouring with crayons, baking cookies, and wrapping sage bundles after school. Burning bits of coloured paper in the fireplace. He had said, “You know, she liked you more than me because you’re like her. Don’t have kids. You’ll be just like her.” When I had asked him what he meant, he replied, “She was always out with her friends, or entertaining them in one of her salons. She made me go upstairs. She had no time for me once she found out I was normal.”

And I could see it, what it was like for him. Grandnan walking about in her patterned scarves, wafting lilac perfume and greeting her friends with the high trill of her voice, only to turn and banish her son up the stairs.

I didn’t like to think about that. “I am sorry, though.”

“For what?” Mycroft says.

“That I never saw Sherlock.”

Mycroft’s mouth twists. “It’s quite alright, Greg. I’m not sure why you’re so focused on this.”

“I suppose it’s my own guilt,” I admit. I can’t look him in the eye. “For my part in his arrest. In his…” I can’t say _suicide._ “I want to apologise.”

Mycroft lifts his hand toward mine. Lays it on the sheet between us. I slide my hand toward his until our pinkies touch. His skin is hot. It’s so unexpected. But I cherish it. Cherish that little bit of comfort between us. That trust.

“Cass hated it,” I say, and I immediately regret bringing her up between us, but I can’t seem to stop the words from dropping out of my mouth, like a warning. “When her mother died, she begged me to get a message to her, or from her. Begged me. Yelled at me when I told her I couldn’t, that it didn’t work that way. I’d told her before that my nan could, so she threw that in my face - what good was I if I could have this, this _gift_ -” I say it with a sneer, “- but couldn’t use it to the best of my ability.” I can still remember the angry flashing blue of her eyes.

“Your ex-wife was an odious and selfish person.” It’s not quite a fair assessment, but I don’t stop him from saying it. “I would never expect you to perform for me like some parlour monkey. Especially if this is what it does to you.”

My chest warms. My pulse kicks up. It feels like we’ve crossed some barrier. Some line of understanding. I didn’t expect it to happen like this. Some hour of the morning, Mycroft Holmes in my bed, despite my mad ravings in the dead of the night. 

I slide my fingers over his, lock them together. He doesn’t pull away, his eyes on mine. It’s an understanding. An admittance. We’ve shared a bed and now we’re holding hands. We’ve spilt secrets, and we’re not moving away from each other.

“Thank you,” I say, at risk of popping this lovely bubble of calm and acceptance.

“My pleasure.” Mycroft gives me a soft, almost uncertain smile. “There is still the matter of this case.”

“Yeah,” I say with a sigh. Bubble popped.

“Greg. You saw that I recognised the mask and symbol you drew. It’s quite clear to me that your ‘source,’ is, of course, yourself.”

“Yeah.” I can’t help but smile.

“I do know that it seems to represent an occult organisation that I have yet to infiltrate.”

“An occult organisation?” Tension builds between my shoulders. “What do you mean by that?”

“The symbol is one I have seen in some places. Certain, high-powered individuals. I’ve been trying to ascertain whether it is a threat to British security. The mask is a perversion of ones worn long ago by druids. I have wondered if the symbol is much the same, but have yet to identify it.” He strokes one finger along Greg’s. Something inside Greg thrills with the sensation. “But I must admit to you that I haven’t given it much thought. We get many potential threats, some far more salient than others. Some more immediate. Our resources go to those. This one has only been an unknown. Nothing overtly obvious as to need to take precautions.”

“If this symbol is connected to some high-powered individuals...could they be connected to this case?”

“They could be. Or not. I can’t...I don’t have all the data.” My heart squeezes for a moment. That’s a line Sherlock used. “But it’s why I...wangled my way onto your case.”

“You call that wangling,” I say, smiling.

Mycroft returns it with his own warm smile. “Definitely wangling.”

“I hate to see what you’re like when you force your way into somewhere.” 

Mycroft’s smile grows bigger. “I assure you it’s terrifying.”

I laugh. It occurs to me that I haven’t felt this good in ages. Here I am, after a night of some actual sleep despite the nightmarish visitation, and I’m laughing, holding hands with a man I’m attracted to in bed. “Okay. So. This is my new thought. We talk to some of the folks we’ve already talked to. You and I. We show them the symbol. Ask them about it. You’re like Sherlock, a walking lie detector, yes?”

Mycroft rolls his eyes but he’s still smiling. “Yes. Exactly like that.”

“Great.” I grin. “Then we’ll see who, if anyone, knows about it.”

Mycroft squeezes my hand. “Lay on, MacDuff.”

“First thing’s first. Let’s get some coffee.”

It should be awkward. It should be awkward for us to release the handhold and get dressed (he in the loo, me in my bedroom), and then make our way out the door. Instead, it seems natural. Like we fit. 

I look at him and he looks at me, just as I place my hand on the doorknob to walk out of the flat. “Mycroft,” I say. 

He pauses.

“Thank you.”

His cheeks blush, and he ducks his chin. “You’re quite welcome.”

I reach over, give his hand one last squeeze, let go, and lead us out the door.


	11. The Devil's in the Details

“Hello, Tansy,” I say at the door. 

Her face falls to see me. “Still?”

I assume she means I'm still badgering her. “Still.” 

She walks away, leaving the door open for us to enter. “Come on in.”

Beaver is dancing in circles before us as we walk through the door, her fluffy tail wiggling.

Shockingly, Tansy’s flat is now spotless. Not a decorative pillow askew, not an article of clothing thrown anywhere, not a wad of tissue on the ground. 

“Looking good in here,” I say.

“You my mum?” she says.

“Fair,” I say. 

“Who’s this?” She nods toward Mycroft.

“Home Office,” Mycroft says. “Barnaby Wexler.” I restrain myself from laughing at the alias.

“Uh-huh,” she says, as her eyes rake him over. “Why are you here now?” She’s wearing all black. Gets out a pack of cigarettes from her handbag hanging on the coat rack. “Vicki’s dead. Jules is dead. Are you still trying to pin it on him?”

“Do you think Jules did it?”

She lights up her cigarette. Surprising, considering she does keep the ashtray out on the balcony.

“I don’t think Jules could hurt a fly. Sure, he hurt Eliza’s feelings and all,” she says, as she waves the cigarette through the air, plumes of smoke swirling about, “but he’d never hurt someone physically. Wasn’t his way. Gentle as a lamb. D’you ever take a day off?”

“Justice never sleeps,” I say.

“Ha. Funny,” she says and takes another drag. Her eyes move to Mycroft again.

“Tansy, would you mind looking at a picture for me?” I hold it out for her to see.

“Of course,” she says and leans forward to peer at the photograph of my drawing. “What is that?”

“Do you recognise it?” I study her expression.

“Looks spooky. Nothing I’ve seen before. That...face? Mask? It’s creepy. Like a vulture or one of those plague doctor masks.”

“Similar, yeah,” I say, as I tuck the page back into my file. 

“Or, not a vulture. More like a crow. No hook on the beak.” She inhales from her cigarette. I get the urge to snatch it out of her hand and steal a puff. 

Instead, I look at Mycroft, who I’m surprised to find is bent over and petting the little dog. 

Tansy looks, too. Without looking up, Mycroft says, “Are you a big fan of animals, Ms Winters?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I eat vegetarian, try not to use leather, all that.”

“And your upcoming benefit?”

“To help out a conservation centre for birds.”

“Mm,” Mycroft says. Beaver leans against his ankle, a look of pure bliss on the dog’s face as Mycroft scratches her rump. “I wish you luck. I’m sure it will do well.”

“Thanks,” she says, one eyebrow arched as she watches Mycroft. I’m getting a little jealous of the sensations the dog seems to be experiencing from the strokes of his long fingers. 

“Last one,” I say, and pull out my sketch of the church. It’s a bit smudged, but it’s clear. It was important to Vicki, and someone has to know it. “Do you recognise this place?”

“No,” she says after a cursory look.

I figure this is it. We’re done here, right? Mycroft isn’t asking any other questions and I’m just trying to find out if Tansy has a tie to this mysterious group.

“Well, thanks anyway. And I am sorry about your friends.”

“This whole thing’s a bloody mess,” she says. 

“I won’t argue with you there,” I say. “We appreciate your time.”

She sees us out.

“Well, what do you think?” I ask, as we head down to the car park.

“I think she’s afraid,” he says, straightening his tie as we walk. “All the posturing. Of what, I don’t know. She’s trying to hide something. She thinks she has it figured out. It’s survival for her.”

“Should we go back?”

“I think backing her into a corner will only encourage the claws.”

“Hm. Okay, now we visit the wife, Mr Wexler,” I say, with a waggle of my eyebrows.

Mycroft smirks, his eyes light with humour. 

* * *

“Can’t you see I’m having a tragedy here?”

“Yes, and we’re trying to solve it...unless you think your husband killed Victoria Rivera?”

Eliza Stewart’s face darkens as her lip curls. “Have a seat, gentlemen.” She goes over to a fancy sideboard and begins pouring what looks like Jagermeister into a glass. No ice.

I shudder. “Thanks for seeing us, Ms Stewart.”

“You want any?” she asks, holding her glass up.

“No, thank you.”

Mycroft shakes his head no.

“Thanks for offering,” I say, as Mycroft and I sit on a Victorian sofa that’s about as hard as a rock. It’s upholstered in a black and white houndstooth that jars against the dark mahogany wood of the frame.

“So, Inspector, what can I help you with?”

“Well, our investigation into Victoria Rivera’s death is still open.”

“I did talk to a cop already. Don’t you guys share notes?” She faces us, taking a sip from her glass. She’s pretty in a way that differs from Victoria. Dark eyeliner and smokey eyeshadow, hardened eyes like black pebbles, a dark mole beneath one, and thick, red-painted lips. Tanned skin. Pearly teeth. She peers at us with no small amount of suspicion.

“We do, but something new has come up,” I say. “You spoke with Sergeant Donovan about Mr Mathison’s whereabouts, and about yours.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I was with my sister.”

“Right. Chloe Higgins.” I pull out the page with my sketches. “Ms Stewart, do you recognise this symbol?”

She steps forward to see them. Takes the page in her hand. “Yeah, I’ve seen this symbol. In with Jules’ things.”

I nearly let my jaw drop. Instead, I take a steadying breath. “You’re certain?”

“Yeah,” she says, as she waves the paper around. “What’s all this about?”

“I can’t fully divulge, but any information you can give me will help us get to the truth.”

She pauses. I could shake her. Obviously, I won't, but the urge to compel her to speak is rising. Finally, she says, “I saw it in one of his songwriting notebooks at the cabin.”

“The cabin? The one he says he was occupying at the time of Ms Rivera’s death?”

“Yeah.” She takes another drink, and mumbles, “Wonder if he ever took her there.”

Vicki’s never shown me the cabin. It’s likely unimportant.

“So you saw this in one of his notebooks at the cabin?”

“I did. He goes there some weekends, for the quiet.” Her face shadows. “Or, you know, he used to.”

“I am sorry for your loss,” I say.

She lets out a loud sigh. Opens her mouth as if to speak. Closes it. Then changes her mind and starts talking. “Listen, the last year or so hasn’t been good between us. He’s...he’s been different. He started eating meat, and he wasn’t home when he said he would be, and he stopped going to church.” The frown on her face is dark and heavy. “I thought maybe he was depressed? Except he seemed happy. Just...different. He’d get really philosophical on things - and y’know, he’s a musician, and that’s something they do. But this time he took it to dark places. I never heard him talk like that before.”

“What do you mean by dark places? What did he say?”

“Oh, he started talking about pagan gods, and why Christianity became so powerful, and what makes a god a god...listen, we go to church, but we’re not like American fundies or anything like that."

"Fundies?"

"Fundamentalists. We're devout, but we usually harbour a healthy skepticism here, as is the fashion." Her lips curve downward. "But he...he was going...I don’t know, it was weird. He’s always been a churchgoer and he prays at meals… Suddenly he wasn’t going and wasn’t praying and talking about what makes a divine being a divine being. At first, I thought he was just...exploring...shaping a new ideology for himself. He does that sometimes when he’s working on a new album. Explores themes and bollocks like that. Considers himself a great thinker.”

“But this was different?” Mycroft says. His interest is caught, his gaze intense upon her face.

“Yeah,” she says with a faraway look. “It was different.”

Mycroft glances at me. “Can you give us any specific examples?”

Eliza shakes her head. “I just thought he was talking nonsense. If he wasn’t so dedicated to his lifestyle, I would have thought he was smoking too much pot, but neither of us were into that.”

“And you never found any sign of drugs?” I ask. The constables had already searched Jules’ properties with a warrant.

“No. Never.” She slumps down into a matching Victorian chair opposite us. “It just wasn’t appealing to either of us.” Her gaze sharpens. “What do you make of it?”

“I need this notebook,” I say.

“Oh,” she says. “I burnt it up.”

I goggle at her. Mycroft shifts beside me. “You burnt it?” he asks, and his tone is a lot calmer than mine would have been.

“I was having a bit of a...meltdown...at the time.” She sucks at her teeth. “Look. My husband of thirteen years cheats on me, gets charged with murdering his mistress, and then kills himself in jail? It’s like,” and she throws her hands up into the air, her drink sloshing inside its glass, "who was he all along? Did I marry a stranger? What else has he been hiding from me?” She wipes a bit of spilt liquid from her hand. “Look, I was going to divorce him. I didn’t wish him dead. But then I found those song lyrics -” 

“In this notebook where you saw the symbol?” Mycroft interrupts. Maybe he’s not as calm as I think.

“Yeah. And it was all about the union of two beings, one soul into one body - one bodiless soul and one soulless body - and it was disgusting. He’d been writing about her all along.” Her eyes glimmer, but her voice neither cracks nor softens. “I just...got so mad. I burned all his notebooks in the fireplace.”

I want to throw my hands up and then rip out my hair. This woman, this stupid woman. “You burned the private writings of a man who was being charged with murder?” I ask. I manage to say it calmly, though a slight tremor at the end might hint at my utter frustration.

She bites her lip. “Is that...did I...that wasn’t like evidence or something, was it? They didn’t take it when they searched the place.”

I refrain from rubbing my hand over my face. “If this ever should happen again, Ms Stewart, I would appreciate it if you waited until after an investigation was closed before you burn the things of the accused.” My voice hardens at the end.

Her eyes narrow. Such thick mascara.

“Did you see this symbol anywhere else, Ms Stewart?” Mycroft asks. I’m grateful for his interruption.

“No. Nowhere,” she says.

“And the mask? Do you recognise it?”

“Let me see that one,” she says.

Mycroft smiles, far more cordially than I could muster at the moment and shows her the page with the mask.

Eliza Stewart goes white as a sheet, pale as a ghost, blinding as the glint of sun on an ocean wave. “You’ve seen it,” I say. My heart quickens.

“I...it was here…,” she says, her voice panicky. She stands. “I called you! The police came here when it happened!”

“Explain, please,” Mycroft says, authority edging into his voice.

“We had an intruder!” she says. “It was late, and Jules was out. I was home alone and I - I went down the stairs. And in the hall was a man standing there.” She points, white-faced, at the page. “He was wearing that mask!”

“And you called the police?” I say. “Was he caught?”

“No. Because your lot is too slow,” she says, glaring at me. “I ran straight up the stairs and locked myself in the bedroom and then in the master bathroom. I called the cops and of course he was gone by the time they got here. Jules got home at the same time as them and then they thought I was just hysterical! Seeing things! Like I’m gonna call the cops every time a shadow moves. Bloody pigs...” She glances up from the page, and tosses us a “Sorry.”

“Can you tell us anything else you remember about that night?”

“Only what I just told you. I was home alone. He was standing in the hallway right where you came in. I was just going down the stairs - I was still near the top.”

I’m going to check the record of this when I get into the office, but I ask anyway. “Did you get a sense of how tall he was? How heavy?” 

“Maybe six feet? Twelve and a half stone? He was wearing black and that mask - that disgusting, creepy mask!” She turns away from us.

“Was there anything else that night? A car in the drive? Strange noises?”

“No.”

“Anything else that you can tell us? Anything that seemed out of place?”

“No,” she shakes her head so hard I’m afraid she might hurt herself. “All I can tell you is that it was fucking freaky and I’ll thank you to put that paper away now please.”

Mycroft slides the page into the file sitting on my lap. 

“Why do you have it? What is it?” she asks.

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“How is it connected? Am I in any kind of danger?”

“Not as far as I know,” I say.

“Well, that’s comforting.”

“I know it’s not,” I say.

“Inspector Lestrade has a tendency towards honesty, Ms Stewart, even if it’s not always comforting,” Mycroft says. I hope to hide my blush.

“Did you know Victoria Rivera?” 

Eliza’s mouth hardens. “I’ve seen her around once or twice. She never tried to talk to me.”

“And did you have any contact with her otherwise?”

“No.”

“Did you want to hurt her at all?”

“I would have liked to rip her hair out, but most of my anger was with Jules, and he was still alive after I found out.”

I tilt my head.

“I don’t condone violence,” she says in measured words. “Jules and I fought, verbally, when he told me what happened, and then he slept in the guest room.”

I stare at her for a moment more. She stares back, her gaze smouldering with anger and her shoulders rigid.

“Do you have keys to Cardiac?”

She blinks at me. “Yeah. It’s my husband’s business, which now makes it mine, I guess.”

“Does this include keys to any lockers, or closets, such as one holding equipment for shows?”

“I have Jules’ set.” Her mouth pulls down at the corners. “Why?”

“Protocol,” I say, as I stand and slide out a card from the inner pocket of my coat, “Ms Stewart, please call me if you remember anything else, or if you should happen to come across this symbol anywhere else. Also, I’m sure they’ve told you this, but don’t leave London for a while.”

“Am I a suspect?” she asks, as she takes the card. 

“I have to cover all bases, madam. I know you don’t like it, and I understand that. But it’ll look better for you if you stay in London. They haven’t released Mr Mathison's’ body yet, but I’m sure you have arrangements you’ll want to get started on.”

She licks her lips as she looks down at the card. Looks at me. “D’you think he did it, Inspector?” The anger that was there a moment before seems to be sliding away.

I inhale. Release. “No, I don’t,” I say.

Her dark eyes glisten. “Okay. Thank you.”

“Thank you for your time.” Mycroft stands.

“Yes,” I say. “Thank you. You’ve been helpful.” 

She says, “You’ll report it to the papers if you find out he didn’t do it, right? He might’ve been a prick for stepping out on me, but he doesn’t deserve this kind of legacy.”

I nod. Mathison might be the celebrity, but Vicki doesn’t deserve this, either. “When I find the right person, I promise all of England and the world will hear it.” 

* * *

“Well, this has been quite the day,” I say, and clear my throat. We’re in Mycroft’s car, headed for the club. I’d called Michael Haverly, who told me the bandmates were all planning on drinking in memory of Jules. It was a tense conversation, in which I had to tell Mr Haverly that I was working to clear Jules’ name. “And we’re about to walk in on a bunch of drunken musicians.”

“Excellent. Perhaps it will loosen their tongues.” 

“What do you make of her story of the masked man?”

“No lies detected,” he says, as he cracks a smile. “I would wager that it was Jules himself.”

“Hm. Seems convenient he appeared on the scene when the police were there?”

“Just driving up or already inside the house?”

“I’ll pull the report.” I think for a moment. “You think he’s a member of this group?”

“I’m beginning to think it’s quite likely.”

“I wonder if Ms Stewart would let us look through the house for the mask.”

“No harm in asking. She didn’t mention burning it, at the very least.”

“I couldn’t believe that; could you believe that? I mean. Yeah, I understand the urge. God knows I threw some things when I found out Cass was cheating on me the first time.”

Mycroft is quiet.

“Too much. Sorry.”

“It’s quite alright, Greg. You’re entitled.”

“Yeah, but she’s old news,” I say. 

He looks up at me, his eyes searching mine. I try to give him a smile, hoping he’s reading into what I’m saying. I think it works, because his mouth curves upward, gently.

“We’re here,” he says, as the vehicle slows.

I look out the window at the row of old buildings. Cardiac has a white sign with neon red letters and the R-R line of an electrocardiogram below it. The building itself is an old brown-brick warehouse with white-painted windows. 

“Okay,” I say. “Show’s on.”


	12. A Meadow of Ashes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays! Here's an extra chapter for you!

The blonde girl from the ticket window, Polly, leads us to the back stairwell. “It’s really sad about Vicki. She was such a fun girl.” Her bracelets jangle on her wrists as she walks, a little sway to her hips. “And Jules - it’s hard to believe.”

“Vicki came by here often, then.” 

“She used to come by regularly. The past couple of weeks though, I didn’t see her as much.” She glances at us, her dark blue eyes framed by false eyelashes. Her nose is red, and she clutches a wad of tissues in one hand. “Did - do you really think Jules did it? He was really the nicest bloke. None of us girls felt as if we were in danger from him, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m afraid I can’t comment on the case. But if you ever have information that you think might help us find the truth, I’d appreciate you calling me.” I hand her my card. 

“Of course, Inspector.” 

“Thanks for showing us the way,” I say, and turn to walk up the stairs. Mycroft’s footsteps sound behind me.

We enter the upstairs room of Cardiac. A smiling Michael Haverly sees me, and his face sobers. “Here’s the inspector.”

The other members of Last Heartbeat are in varying stages of intoxication, I’d guess. Drummer Leif Stiles is recognisable from his blond, braided Viking beard, and his height next to Michael - they both tower over everyone. Keyboardist Travis Tauck wears his dark, wild mane long and has shades over his eyes, just like he does in his performances. He’s always reminded me of a vampire, with ash-white skin. When he spots us coming, he throws himself on the couch, letting his limbs sprawl like spaghetti noodles. 

The last member of the group, bassist Curt Mehta, is sitting in a chair, his pointed nose in a plastic cup. His dark eyes watch us a moment before he rises. “Inspector,” he says in an incredibly posh voice. His skin is like burnished copper beneath the fluorescent lighting. “Mike says you’re here to clear Jules’ name.”

“I’m trying to find the truth,” I say. “I’ve interviewed Mr Haverly here, and I know you’re all grieving the loss of a friend. I’d like to help. I’ve only got a few questions. Were any of you aware of where Jules Mathison was the night of October 12th?”

“He always goes out to that cabin if he doesn’t come to the club on a Friday,” says Stiles. He’s got a pout that seems ridiculous on a man who resembles a Viking; petulant pink lips protrude from the fuzz. 

An older white guy with a ponytail enters the room. I look him over: grey hair, prescription sunglasses, and a scruffy beard. “Dale McCarney,” he says to me and shakes my hand. “Manager for Last Heartbeat _._ Do we need a lawyer here?”

His tone puts me on edge. “Why, you offering to represent me for a record deal?”

Haverly snorts. 

“Just a friendly joke,” I say as I put my hands up. “I was in a band as a tyke. Mullet and all. Not too shabby with the birds, am I right, fellas?”

Everyone smiles, even Mr McCarney, though his smile seems closer to a sneer. 

“Anyway, I’m here to figure out who really killed Victoria Rivera.”

McCarney’s eyebrows slide together in a look of surprise. “Oh. And we can help?”

“Yeah. Do you know if Jules was out at his cabin on October 12th?”

“He mentioned nothing to me, but I assume if he says he was out there, he was out there.” McCarney crosses his arms. 

“Alright,” I say, and I turn back to the band and pull out the page with the symbol. “Anyone recognise this?”

Haverly and Stiles exchange a look. Tauck doesn’t move, and I’m not even sure his eyes are open under his sunglasses. Mehta shakes his head no. 

“What’s that look?” I direct the question at Haverly and Stiles. 

“Uh, I dunno, it’s a weird symbol,” Haverly says. “But I definitely saw it in some of Jules’ notes. We were, um, going to be recording some new songs. Jules writes a lot of our stuff, and he was on a new tear, about something. A concept album. I don’t know, it all sounded weird, but he’s never led us wrong before.”

“It was some occult shit,” Tauck says from his place on the couch. “I’ve never seen that symbol, but I did see some of his lyrics. Spooky shit about souls and sacrifices and shit.”

“Travis, man, that’s not really fair,” Stiles rounds on him. “I don’t think Jules has been himself for a while. For fuck’s sake, our friend just killed himself, and you know that it’s not just because Eliza was leaving him.” 

Mehta speaks up. “I think he’s been depressed for a while.” He turns back to Travis. “And no one thought to intervene.”

Tauck jumps up from the couch. “But what if it was because he did kill Vicki?”

The room explodes with shouting and hissing as Tauck throws his hands and his mane around, defending his position loudly. Mehta goes back to the chair he was first sitting in when we arrived, crosses his arms, and sits, after telling Tauck to fuck off. Mycroft watches them with raised eyebrows.

Meanwhile, I notice Dale McCarney has come around to inspect the symbol.

“Anything?” I say, ignoring the ruckus between the bandmates.

“‘Fraid not,” McCarney says. “I might’ve seen it among Jules’ notes, maybe? But I only glanced at them once during a practice.” 

“And this?” I pull out the page depicting the mask. “Ever see anything like this amongst his possessions?”

I think McCarney’s eyes widen beneath his glasses. I can’t be sure though.

“Well, that’s a mite fuckin’ creepy, if you ask me,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say, repressing a shudder as I recall the dream that first depicted this visage to me. 

“But no, I can’t say that I have. What type of mask is it? It’s a mask, right?”

“Yes,” I say. “I’m not at liberty to divulge details. One last thing...” I turn to the band. “Hey!” I shout over the uproar. They pause and stare at me. “Anyone recognise this church?”

Tauck snorts. “Jules was the churchie, not us.”

“I’m Hindu,” says Mehta.

“I’m not asking if you go to church, I’m asking if you recognise this place." 

“No,” says Tauck. Stiles and Haverly shake their heads. Mehta lifts his shoulders as if he’s bored.

Mycroft turns to us after watching the members shuffle into an awkward stalemate, each of them sitting on a different piece of furniture, shooting glares at one another. 

“Well, seems like you’ve brought the party down a bit, Inspector,” McCarney says. 

“Apologies, fellas,” I say, putting the pages back. I slide out a card and hand it to McCarney. I give more to each bandmate. “If you think of anything that can help this case, please call me.”

I get some nods. Michael Haverly sees us to the door. “Thanks for stopping by.”

“Sorry to have stirred up some shit.”

“Everyone’s raw, that's all. Thanks for believing in Jules. You, uh, want us to sign anything for you?”

I almost smile. “I couldn’t. Maybe I’ll catch a show here one time and we can chat.”

“You come on a Friday and have Polly ask for me,” Haverly says with a wink. I get the sense that he might actually be flirting with me. 

“Thank you for your time, sir,” Mycroft says and shakes Haverly’s hand. Haverly lets him do it, though he blinks in surprise. Mycroft hadn’t said a word the entire time.

As we step out, I say, “You were quiet.”

“I was observing.”

“And what did you see?”

“Many things. One, Michael Haverly is a closeted homosexual and has an eye on you.”

“Is that the foremost thing you saw?” I say, as a grin lifts the corner of my lips and my heart stutters. “The guy who dated our vic?”

“I thought only that you should be aware,” Mycroft says. “Clearly, Ms Rivera was a beard, hence why their breakup was so amicable.” Mycroft looks at me. “And to let you know that you have options.” His eyes glitter.

My grin gets wider. “Nah, he’s too tall. I’d get a crick in my neck tryin’ to kiss ‘im, old man like me.” 

Mycroft lets out a chuckle. I bump shoulders with him. “Anything having to do with the case?”

“McCarney was nervous,” he says. “I couldn’t place why. The band members’ animosity towards one another took me by surprise.”

“Mm. Likely too many hours together, and a mate’s death can rock people’s sense of normality. Okay, I’ll have a look into McCarney’s background. Did you pick up anything there with that lot?”

“Nothing of significance,” he says. He frowns. “It got very heated, and as you say, grief makes people behave strangely.”

I think of Sherlock. Wonder how Mycroft is feeling. “I haven’t asked,” I say.

“You needn’t.” His voice is soft.

“It’s the polite thing to do, innit?”

Mycroft looks at me. “I don’t need you to be polite. Just be yourself, as the adage recommends.”

I’m sure he can see me blushing, but I pretend I’m not. I consider asking him to dinner again, but it’s a Sunday, and I’ve got to head into work tomorrow.

As if he can read my mind, he says, “I’m afraid I must take my leave of you. I have a very important meeting in the morning, and I also have a line of questioning that I’d like to follow for my curiosity that may prove to aid us in our investigation.”

“Are you going to tell me what that is?”

“I assure you, it is a very minor thing, and pertains to some persons of influence. If it confirms my suspicion, you’ll be the first to know.” This is as good as I’m gonna get, so I nod. 

“Alright. I’ll call you if anything comes up at work.” The night air is chilly as we step out.

“Will you let me drive you home?”

“Uh, thanks,” I say. 

Duncan nods as we approach and opens the door to the back of the sedan. 

The way to my flat is quick, and we’re both quiet. I wonder if I could - _should_ \- kiss him. Having shared a bed and shared our secrets has thrown me a bit. I even cooked him dinner. He knows my biggest secret. I wipe my palms against my trousers as I panic - no, no, it’s not panicking. Just considering. A lot.

Mycroft looks at me. A smile plays on his lips. “Perhaps, later this week, I might treat you to dinner?”

The panic dissipates. I bloom under his gaze. “I’d like that.”

“Excellent,” Mycroft says. “Would Friday work?” 

“Yeah. And hopefully, by then we can celebrate closing this case,” I say.

The sedan stops outside my flat. 

Mycroft reaches over and touches my hand. I flip it over and let him slide his fingers between mine. He squeezes. I squeeze back. “You’ll text me as soon as you have any updates, then?” I say.

“Yes. And you?”

“Yes.” I give him another squeeze and let go. With a parting smile, I open the door and step out into the brisk October breeze. 

* * *

I’m just finishing dinner on the sofa when my mobile rings. It’s an unknown number.

“Lestrade,” I say, putting my slippered feet up on the coffee table.

“Yes, Inspector, Dale McCarney, here. Manager for Last Heartbeat. We met this afternoon?”

I put my plate of beans on toast on the cushion beside me. Mycroft thought McCarney was nervous. Maybe I’m about to find out why. “Hi, Mr McCarney.”

“Yeah, listen, I didn’t want to say anything in front of the guys, but you should know...Jules wasn’t the only one showing up with that symbol written in the margins of his notes.”

“He wasn’t?” I say. “Who else was?”

“I...is there any way we can meet? I’ve got evidence that I think you need to see.”

“What kind of evidence?”

“I can’t say over the phone. Do you want to see it or not? I’m kind of putting my neck out here,” he says, his voice low and desperate.

This bloke rubs me the wrong way. “Withholding evidence is a crime, but sure, I’ll play your game. Do you want to come down to the station -”

“No. Please. If anyone sees me there and recognises me, I could be in danger.”

I pause. “You believe you’re in danger?” Tansy had that same feeling. At least, she believes herself to be in some kind of danger, doesn’t she? I sometimes suspect it’s just her avoiding the paps.

“Listen, I don’t believe Jules killed himself for one moment. Do you?”

I hold the phone to my ear, thinking. “I didn’t really know the guy.”

“How’s he going to hang himself in prison? I visited him, you know. He was upset about his marriage and about the arrest, but he was telling me all about what he was planning to do once he was bailed out. That’s not the behaviour of someone who’s planning to kill himself, if you ask me.”

“True. Listen. There’s a coffee shop over on the corner of Albany St and Weymouth St, by Regent’s Park. Can we meet there?”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah. Say eight? Coffee shop closes at nine.” That’ll give me an hour to get there.

“Yeah, I can do that,” he says. 

“Okay. I’ll see you then.”

He hangs up.

* * *

I pull the collar up on my overcoat. The nights are getting colder and colder. The leaves are turning in sherbert shades of orange and yellow. Some shops have Halloween decorations up, grinning skeletons and goofy ghosts. 

I’ve texted Mycroft about meeting McCarney, telling him about our meeting time and where. How McCarney thinks his life was in danger. His thoughts on Jules’ suicide.

 _Take care,_ Mycroft had written back.

I know it’s a cliché to say it, but I feel like a teenager again. Except there’s no big rush, no desperate flight to each other to stick ourselves together like two sides of a sandwich. Instead, we’re taking it easy. Getting comfortable with one another. It’s really, really special.

I’m lost in my thoughts about Mycroft when a shadow moves from an alley. My hand goes to my hip where I’ve often kept my baton, but I’m unarmed now. The shadow turns out to be a bloke in an entire Fulham kit. He gives me a dirty look and passes by, a frown formed on his lips. Knob.

I laugh to myself and keep walking. This case has me on edge. 

I enter the coffee shop and see Dale McCarney at a little wooden table. The table rocks back and forth as I sit. “Ran into a full kit wanker outside,” I say. 

McCarney ignores me to fiddle with the table. “Oh, probably needs a little wedge under one of the legs,” he says. “Why don’t you put this under it,“ he hands me a wad of paper napkins, “and let me get you a coffee. What’ll you have?”

“Just a regular with some milk, thanks,” I say, as I stare at him, holding napkins and a bit bewildered. McCarney heads for the counter.

I dutifully stuff the napkins beneath the offending foot of the table and settle into my chair once the table stops rocking. I test it. Look up. McCarney is over at the coffee bar, putting milk into a cup. His shoulders are tense. He glances back at me and gives me a quick smile. I nod and switch to gazing around the shop. Only a few people, a couple of women chatting with one another, a third woman bent over her laptop. A harried-looking man grabbing coffees to go. Wonder where he’s off to this late on a Sunday with full-strength coffee in hand.

When McCarney arrives at the table, he doesn’t sit down. “Maybe we could go stand outside? I just…” He looks around. “I don’t want anyone to overhear us?”

“Uh, sure.” I think of the alley down the way. “I know where we can go.”

“Great,” he says and passes me my cup.

I lead him into the crisp autumn air and towards the alley. 

“Here’s great,” he says, before we reach it.

“Huh?” I look around. The pavement is empty, and only the occasional car passes on the street. “Okay. Sure.”

“Alleyways aren’t my thing,” he says. “A bit claustrophobic.” He laughs nervously.

I drink from my cup. Aside from the bitterness of the brew, it hits the spot. “Are you afraid we’re being watched or something?” An empty car is parked at the kerb. We stand just outside of a streetlight’s glow. Concealed enough, I suppose. I don’t notice anyone watching us.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe I’m being overly paranoid. But maybe I’m not.” He bounces on the balls of his feet. Spry seeming, for an older guy. “I, uh, was really startled when I heard Jules had killed himself. I don’t believe it for an instant.”

“Mm,” I say. McCarney launches into this story of how he met Jules, when he was just some punk kid with big dreams and a guitar, working with his best friends Michael Haverly and Leif Stiles. Later, they included Travis Tauck and Curt Mehta. It’s a sweet story, and his voice shakes at certain points. I figure he needs it out of his system before he can tell me what he’s seen. I wonder if it’s a bit of “these are good kids” and “I’m sure they never meant to get mixed up in whatever occult business this is.” I pretend to be interested in what he’s saying for about ten minutes.

And then a yawn assails me. “Okay, Mr McCarney, this is all very good, but didn’t you have something to show me?” My bed is calling me.

“Yeah,” he says, as he scrubs one hand over his scruffy beard. “Yeah. Anyway, you heard me mention that I’ve seen that symbol before...with Del Rivera.”

My mind boggles. “Del Rivera? Where? How?”

“Well, you know the tech guys all sort of congregate around that one office if they’re not upstairs in the lounge. I’ve seen little sticky notes in there with that symbol on it.” He nods his head. “Listen, I don’t want to make it harder for Del than it already is, which is why I’m telling you this in secret.”

I scratch my head. I’ve drunk about half my coffee, but honestly, this day has worn me out. I can’t get out of this conversation fast enough. “And the physical evidence?”

He produces a small, yellow, square piece of paper. “I snatched this from the office earlier today. I figure you can analyse the handwriting and link it to Del, right?” He passes the paper to me. Sure enough, there’s that symbol. The handwriting beside it says, _‘_ _What if all trees refused to let go of every dying leaf?’_

“Okay,” I say. I dig an evidence baggie out of the pocket of my overcoat and place the sticky note inside. “Thanks for this, Mr McCarney, really. You’ve been very helpful.”

“Grand, grand,” he says. “I don’t want it to be Del, y’know. He’s been a great asset to Cardiac and he’s a great bloke, despite the drinking problem.”

“Mm,” I say. “Would you ever suspect him of hurting his daughter?”

McCarney shrugs. “No one likes to think about it, right? But Del...is kind of old-fashioned. If she really was pregnant like the rumours say…”

_Old-fashioned._

“The rumours?” I didn’t think it was public yet.

“Just bits I’ve heard. Can’t say it’s true though.” He peers at me. “Was she pregnant, Inspector?”

“I’m not at liberty to divulge details on this case.” 

“Right.” He takes a step closer. “You okay?”

I’m teetering on my feet. “I’m just...tired. Lots of sleepless nights,” I say, and try to shake off the wave of nausea that suddenly overcomes me. Am I coming down with something? I rub my eyes. Swallow down the last of my coffee. 

It’s really bitter.

I open my eyes wide at McCarney. McCarney stands close enough that our breath mingles in foggy clouds. “Inspector! Let me help you.”

“No,” I say, but I’m woozy and unsteady. The pavement tilts. My limbs are like water.

An arm goes around my back as hands grasp my shoulders. “There we go. My car is right over here. Let me drive you home.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Okay. But maybe...hospital?”

“I don’t think so, Inspector.”

“Call M’croft,” I say. “He—”

“I won’t be calling anyone, Inspector. And neither will you.” His hands feel like they’re everywhere. I try to push them away.

“Stop—” I say, though my mouth feels like I’ve swallowed paper napkins. The pavement is getting further away. A car is too close, McCarney is too close. The world is blurry. White static at the edges.

I’m pushed forwards and into the car. It feels good to sit, but when the door slams shut, a cold panic flashes through me. I’m frozen. Sluggish. I try the door handle. Fumble, try again, and can’t pull the lever when an arm reaches over me.

“None of that now, Inspector.” His gruff voice enters my right ear. Fear threads its way into my veins. “Let’s buckle you in. I’m going to drive you to your last resting place.”

The car lurches forward. The scenery outside is a blur. I think I might scream but nothing more than a whine vibrates in my throat.

My eyes close. I float away, like a spirit lingering over a meadow of ashes, blowing in the wind.


	13. Contrapposto

My vision fills with Victoria Rivera. Her visage blocks the grey light behind her. Her eyes brim with tears. She shakes me by the collar. It rattles my brain like a rock tumbler, and each time I try to move away from her in a numb drift, she yanks me back. A sharp slap stings across my face. She shocks me again with another. I try to move my arms to defend myself, but they don’t respond - as good as logs. I can’t even move my tongue; it weighs heavy in my mouth like wet sand. She shoves me this way and that, crying. Her weeping fills my ears and tugs at something in my chest. 

I’m weighed down somehow. 

I can’t move. _I can’t move._

But she’s there, pulling me up, like I’m drowning and she’s the lifeguard kicking her way up to the surface. I suck in air. My eyelids flicker. In front of me, she dissipates like a mid-morning fog. Distant voices slip through the air in sporadic snippets. 

A dark, paneled ceiling comes into focus.

I’m lying down. Alone. 

I can’t move.

_I can’t move._

Like in sleep paralysis, I’m fighting against my body, telling it to move. My limbs might as well be petrified wood. I’m lying on a hard floor, looking up at the ceiling. The room is dim, but fluorescent light slashes in from a door at a sharp angle. 

My nose hurts. My lips feel heavy and chapped. It’s like I’m wearing a reptilian skin, dry and coarse, and if I could just twist and rub against the objects in the room, I could shuffle out of it and reveal the fresh new organ beneath it.

“I am aghast, McCarney,” a voice says. It jabs into the room from the open door. My pulse jumps at the idea of being rescued. “How could you kidnap and detain a police detective?”

Oh. So, no rescue.

The second voice is low, but I know it's Dale McCarney. _Fuckin’ hell._

I try again to move my limbs, but I might as well be flailing in quicksand. The more I try to move, the thicker, the more choking the rising panic becomes. 

“Even if he does know what the symbol means, what can he do about it? What proof does he have? Who would believe him?” the voice hisses. “I grant that it is worrisome he has it at all - and one of the masks - but I’ll bet he got it all from that stupid wife! I am -” and the next words are mumbled. 

As I lay there and my eyes adjust to the dimness, movement in the corner distracts me. Like a shadow unfolding. Growing. Stretching and distending along the wall in the shape of a man.

“He knows about the church - I think Jules told him. Doesn’t that worry you?” McCarney says.

Breathing gets harder as I watch the shadow walk along the wall. I blink hard. I must be imagining it - but no, it’s moving. Darker than anything else in the room. My pulse pounds in my ears as fear threads its way through me. 

Oh god, I still can’t move. I still can’t move!

“He doesn’t know where it is, and that’s key. But don’t you think a dead detective inspector is going to bring more notoriety to this case than it has already? Jules killed Victoria and killed himself in jail. That’s all we needed! Now you’ve gone and cocked it right up!”

“What’ll you have me do?” McCarney’s voice is plaintive. “I thought you’d want to speak to him!”

The shadow glides onto the ceiling. A whimper escapes my throat. I push against my limbs again. 

No response.

“Certainly not! We have our man on the inside! This is your mess; you clean it up. But you better do a good job. I won’t have the Order or anyone else within the Order implicated. It’s bad enough we had to do away with one of our own already. Too many questions.”

“That’s just it, though! Why are they still asking questions? Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

The shadow seems to drip from the ceiling, bits of darkness like drops of sooty rain floating through the air, floating down, towards my frozen body.

“Get rid of him. Throw him off the bridge. Make it look like a mugging. I don’t care. Just do it. And avoid the goddamn cameras! If you get caught, what happened to Mathison will happen to you.” 

I hold my breath. Shut my eyes.

Heavy footsteps - boots - sound down the hallway, fading.

I open my eyes. The shadow is gone.

“Shit. Christ.” McCarney’s epithets carry through the door. 

My heart pounds. My head is heavy. I still can’t lift a finger. As far as I can tell, I’m in a tiny room with some shelves and one chair. No windows. I can’t turn my head to see anything else. Only look out the corners of my eyes. No shadows move. 

The door flies open and bangs off the wall. The sound echoes around the room like the harrowing reverberations of a bomb. 

The ceiling light flashes on, blinding me for a moment.

“Awake yet, Lestrade?” McCarney says.

I keep my eyes shut, hoping he’ll think I’m still knocked out, but likely he saw them react to the bright light.

A sharp kick to my ribs forces my eyes open. Air erupts from my lungs. The pain radiates along my side in hot, agonising waves. 

McCarney looks at me, looms over me, a dissatisfied frown plain on his furred face. “Looks like I’m going to have to kill you myself,” he says. He takes his glasses off and begins to wipe them with the hem of his shirt. It’s such an ordinary task in such a bizarre situation, I could laugh. “A dip in the Thames?”

 _Shit._ My tongue is still a wet blanket, but I hope my eyes broadcast the message: _fuck you._

“Unless...well, all you have to do is tell me where you got the symbol and the mask. And tell me who else knows besides that suit that showed up with you?” He places his glasses back on his nose.

_Oh god. Mycroft._

The fear must show in my eyes, because he laughs. “Oh, that hit a note, did it? Excellent. Because if you don’t tell me, he’s next.”

 _Christ._ Mycroft has bodyguards. Or, at least, I think Anthea, Duncan, and Omar are his bodyguards, as harmless as Anthea might look. Duncan is built like a wrestler, and Omar is fit and carries a gun.

“I’ll give you some time to think about it. In the meantime, I’ve got arrangements to make.” He leaves the room, shutting the door behind him.

* * *

I’m not sure how much time passes. Vicki seems to flicker into being at the edges of my vision. A feeling of helplessness and grief wells up within me - but it isn’t mine. Tears fill my eyes, and while they’re mine, she’s the force behind them.

 _“Hey,”_ I think at her, hoping she hears my thoughts. _“I always knew I might die on the job. It’s okay.”_ I try to move a shoulder - ignore the swoop of panic in my gut when it doesn’t respond. _“I, um...you know, obviously you got caught up in something here. That’s why they killed you. I’m sorry that happened to you. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help you.”_

My chest clenches. Everything hurts, I think. It’s hard to tell. I swallow, the muscles struggling as if I was swallowing an avocado stone. _“I’m glad I got to tell Mycroft...well, he knows that I care, anyway.”_

She lingers, and in a way, she makes me grateful - if I die, I won’t die alone.

It’s probably another hour before he enters again. Maybe. I’m not sure I have an accurate sense of time. 

“How are those limbs feeling now, Lestrade?”

I’ve been able to wiggle fingers a bit, but nothing more. I glare.

“Right. Okay.” He delivers another savage kick to my ribs. This time a howl breaks from my throat as my eyes roll to the back of my head. Adrenaline rushes through me as the pain purges any thoughts of getting away. My legs are like lead anyway; he could throw me into the Thames, and I’d sink like a brick.

He pulls me up into the nearby chair. It reminds me of a conference chair with the ugly wood stain and maroon cushions worn away from too many arses. He uses rope to tie me upright. I couldn’t tell you how tight he tied it, I could only just barely feel it. He grabs my chin to force me to look at him. “Your voice should be back soon. You’ll be able to give me the answers I want.” 

_Thwack!_

Pain bursts from the centre of my face. Tears spring to my eyes. A loud whimper erupts from my throat. My face falls forward onto my chest. I can both see and feel the blood pouring from my nose onto my chest. As a kid, I once poured all of the ketchup out of the bottle, and onto the table to recreate a murder scene I’d seen on the telly. I’d covered my stuffed teddy with it, and then explained to Grandnan it was time to perform surgery to save his life.

Looking back on it, I can say now that there wouldn’t have been a surgeon alive who could have saved a teddy from that amount of exsanguination. 

“See you later,” McCarney says with a chuckle. The pain is a good sign, I’m trying to tell myself. It means feeling is coming back. 

I’m vaguely aware of him turning to leave.

* * *

I’m alone again. This time, I’m in pain. Feeling stings in my fingers, tingling and on fire. At least I won’t choke to death on the blood draining from my nose, since my head hangs forwards like a forgotten puppet. My eyes flick around the room, seeing as best as they can with the light off and me being unable to move. No shadowy figures emerge. If I stare too long in one direction, my eyes begin to play tricks - the hint of something moving. I don’t watch horror movies for exactly this reason. My mind has seen enough without conjuring imagined things from dark corners. 

I need to distract myself. 

_“You there, Vicki?”_

It’s not like I expect an answer. But I get the feeling the nickname was for friends and family. She probably wore herself out trying to wake me earlier and won’t appear now. It’s amazing that she appears at all, as often as she does. 

Mycroft. Fuck. I wish I could talk to Mycroft. Just once.

* * *

I think I must have nodded off - a sudden blare of light stirs me to alertness. 

“Wakey-wakey, Lestrade,” McCarney says, as he enters. He’s removed his jacket and he’s rolling his sleeves up. “Morning’s almost here. I need some answers, and I need them now. I know they’re all thinking you got your info from Jules or from his bitch of a wife, but I need to know who else knows your information.” He’s set up a card table in the room with some tools on top. A length of chain. Pliers. A wrench. 

My mouth may as well be full of dry sand. I struggle to lift my head. An ache runs through my neck and shoulders. The air seems closed in, full of dust and fear, as if fear has a scent. 

It’s me.

I follow his movements with my eyes and he fingers the tools on the table. I wish I could shake my head in disbelief. He’s a bloody band manager, and now we’re here in this room and he’s got instruments of torture laid out on a table. Like this is a hobby he picked up, some fucked up way to relax. 

“I figure you should have your speech coming back to you soon. Thought I might give you a little preview of what can happen if you don’t give me the info I’m looking for.” He picks up the pliers. They glint in the overhead light as he runs a finger over the gripping jaw. “I’ve used this drug plenty of times before. The groupies, you know, that a band attracts. None have taken so long as you, though, to get feeling back. You’re pretty special.”

My stomach twists like the wringing of a flannel. I was wondering if this man had the kind of cruelty inside of him to inflict torture on someone else, but now I have my answer. 

“And you’ve got a pretty face,” he says. “Bet the birds love you. Bet you were trouble as a tyke, yeah? Don’t worry. I’ll let you keep it. Your teeth, on the other hand.” He faces me, his shades gone from his face. Finally. His eyes are blue and riddled with broken blood vessels. His smirk is awful. I test moving my chin. Maybe if I bite him.

He approaches, the pliers pointed towards my face. 

I screw my eyes shut, and clench my jaw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO sorry.
> 
> I promise to update very, very soon. Thank you so much for your comments and your kudos. This story has been an incredible ride in the writing, the editing, and in your responses. <3


	14. Comfort Your Spirit

When I was a rookie I thought about getting knifed, or shot. It happened once - getting knifed - and though it isn’t a forgotten fear, it is a fear I could leave on a shelf. Let it sit somewhere off center. Then I met Sherlock Holmes. He attracted some right lunatics who seemed to love thinking up worse ways for people to die.

This is one of those ways.

McCarney’s trouser-legs brush against each other as he approaches, the soft swish of fabric like the trumpets of heralds, though it's not announcing anything good. I grit my teeth. My heart feels like it might shoot straight out of my chest. My eyes stay shut.

A tremendous _BOOM_ rocks the room. McCarney yelps. The ground shakes. It’s as if my body is being ejected from the chair. My eyes shoot open. Smoke fills the room, and the explosion rings in my ear as an acrid stench burns in my nose. With a panicked gasp, I draw smoke into my lungs, and it spurs a painful coughing fit. The air smells like fireworks and burnt plastic. Maybe this is how it smelt to Vicki when she was dying. 

Someone is yelling, loud and sharp. Footsteps strike the floor like short peals of thunder. Dark figures slide through the fog. 

The shadow? Oh god, is it—

A thud on the ground. More shouts. Then a dark face in mine. I jerk back. “Hey man, hey! Are you alright? Inspector Gregory Lestrade, can you respond?”

Oh god. I think I whimper. I might have whined. I wanted to yell. Maybe I was silent. Either way, within moments the smoke is clearing, and it’s no shadowy figure, it’s a man. Dressed in black. He shines a light in my eyes. I think he goes to touch my face, but I flinch. 

I don’t want him touching me. I don’t want anyone touching me.

“Greg!” A voice I know. My heart thumps. I might have whined again. All around me is the white snow sound of a telly with disconnected cable, but through the noise, I can hear my name in that voice, that voice I know. 

Hands come around my face as Mycroft comes into view. He touches me gingerly; he cradles my jaw with those long, lovely hands of his. His face is lined, his mouth twisted, his eyes wide with fright. “Is he alright?”

A voice in the distance responds. “He’s been drugged. We’ll get the paramedics in here.”

I want to tell him not to worry - he should never have to worry. 

I’m alright, I want to say. _I’m alright._

I can hear the cries of ‘medic!’ as the pain lessens, and the light fades.

Vicki stands to one side. Watching. I think. Maybe I imagined her.

I don’t have to hold on anymore. Mycroft is here.

* * *

A clock ticking. Dim light. I work at opening one eye and when it does, the stinging sensation of the air sends it right back to closed. I work on opening both. After a moment, it works. I blink a few times.

Memories flood me. The stone-numb sensation and the all-consuming fear of not being able to move. A small cry cuts through my throat, followed quickly by relief as I fling my arms up. I sit. A deluge of bleary-eyed dizziness threatens me with nausea.

“Greg,” says a familiar voice. A warm hand takes mine.

I open my eyes again and wait for Mycroft’s face to come into focus. We’re in a small room with a double bed. Bedside tables with lamps. A wardrobe in the corner. A single window, high up and small, framing a grey sky. The wallpaper is faded, floral. A crack runs across the ceiling. It’s not anyplace I recognise, but with Mycroft here, I know I must be alright.

“Where are we?” I ask, my throat rough as if I’ve been screaming on a rollercoaster.

I hate rollercoasters. My heart beats fast.

“You’re safe. You, I, Anthea, Duncan, and Omar are the only ones who know about this place. A safe house.”

My nose is bunged up. I start to bring a hand to my face, but Mycroft prevents it. “Am I okay?” My ribs hurts. Bruised. My face feels numb. Heavy. Like that reptilian skin is still on it, hasn’t shuffled off. Stuck. Still in that tiny dark room with a shadowy figure and arid, stiff skin. 

“You gave me such a fright,” Mycroft says. “You’re fine. It was Rohypnol, and apparently, you respond to it by going into complete paralysis.”

“Shit,” I say. Fear washes over me. I try to rub my face, but Mycroft stops me again. His fingers feel cool to the touch. I’m hot.

“Too many blankets,” I say.

He helps me take the covers off. I’m only in pants. Grey ones.

“Apologies,” he murmurs. “Your clothes had blood and dirt on them. I didn’t think you’d be comfortable. Plus, they’re evidence.”

“‘S fine,” I say. “An’ my nose?”

“Not broken, though I imagine it’s quite sore,” he says. I look at him. His hair is loose, free of whatever he uses to slick it into place. His face is open, worried. 

About me.

I take his hand back and hold it. “Are my ribs okay?”

“They checked you over for any broken bones or bruises. You were rather incoherent. How do your ribs feel now?”

“Sore,” I say. “Did I say anything funny?”

Mycroft frowned. “It sounded like you were trying to comfort your spirit. Vicki. You repeated her name. You told her not to cry.”

“Hmm.” I reach up and this time Mycroft doesn’t stop me from touching my nose. I wince as I lay a finger on the tender, swollen flesh. “Okay then. Why are we at a safe house?”

“My investigation…” He stops. Seems to gather himself. Continues. “I don’t believe the members of New Scotland Yard are trustworthy until we’ve vetted them all. My people have McCarney.”

That grates on my nerves even through the fog in my mind. “Your people are trustworthy?”

“I handpicked a few candidates to detain Mr McCarney. And to question him.”

“‘Kay. What’s he said? Anything useful?”

“Not unless you count Last Heartbeat lyrics. I’m thinking he’s planning on trying a plea of insanity.” Mycroft’s face darkens. “If I could have a minute alone with him though—”

“No,” I say. “We do this right.”

I swear he pouts. “Fine,” he says. 

“What songs’ he singing? Is it at least something good?” I'm trying to make light of the situation.

“New material. A bit unnerving, if you ask me. Something about a church of death and rebirth, and a manger on a killing floor -”

I freeze. “Say that again?”

Mycroft looks at me. “The church and death, a manger… I believe you know where I’m headed. Your drawings.”

“New lyrics,” I say.

“Mr Mathison’s recent strange behaviour.” He stands and paces. “He becomes a member of this occult group, and then he begins putting their message into his lyrics.”

“I have to speak with McCarney.” 

Mycroft whirls around and stares at me, wide-eyed. “No. Greg. _No.”_

“It’s my case,” I say. I know I might be being ridiculous. But this is something I have to do. Something I have control over. “You can’t keep me from it. And you can’t just take over with your people and keep me off of it.” I start to heave myself from the bed. The room spins.

“No, please,” he says and sits down, pushing me back, gently, among the covers. “Please. I—” he pauses. Lowers his head. “I was very frightened when you were taken. It took hours to track you down. I—“ He grips the bedcovers with his fists. “I care very much about you.”

My heart stutters at the quiet confession. I swallow. Put my hand out onto his shoulder and stroke down the length of his arm. “I care about you, too, Mycroft.”

“No, I mean,” his lips move, “I care about you. More. More than a friend should.” His hands are clasped on top of the blanket beside my hip. His shoulders are rigid, drawn up by his ears.

My chest floods with warmth like tasting summer-sweet mead on a hot day. “Same. It’s the same for me.”

Mycroft’s eyes meet mine. A slight smile on his lips. 

“I was really looking forward to that date on Friday night,” I say.

“As was I,” he says, and a shadow crosses his face. “I’m glad to hear that you thought of it as a date.”

“If you combed through my background, then you must know about the men.” I take both of his hands.

“I do,” he says. “But...I was trying not to assume.”

“Mycroft Holmes, the man who knows practically everything.”

He chuckles. “Well. Almost everything. Seems you might know a little more than I do on some things. And by that I mean, a very _few_ things, and very _little_ about those things.” His tone is teasing.

I laugh. It hurts my nose but I don’t care. “Okay. Thanks for acknowledging that there might be some areas where I outdo you.”

“ _Some,”_ he says, almost seriously, but his eyes glitter and his mouth curves like the tendril on a vine.

“Some.” I want to kiss him. We’re so close. “And, we’re very close to wrapping this case up, I think.”

“Mm, and you’ll get some well-deserved sleep, I gather.”

“Won’t that be a blessing.” Maybe I should lean closer. Pull him closer. “I’d like to continue this. Between us.”

Mycroft’s smile grows. “As would I.”

“Good.”

A single, high-pitched _beep_ pierces the air. Mycroft’s smile falters as he looks at his wristwatch. “Greg, I hate to cut this moment short, but I must return to the sitting room. I have to speak with Anthea soon. You can listen in, or you are welcome to rest longer. In fact, I should like it very much if you were to allow yourself to rest longer.”

“I’m awake now. I want to hear what she has to say.”

“Mm. I thought you would.” He nods towards a door. “If you think you can manage, the en-suite is through there. A toothbrush, washcloth, and towel await you. The paramedics cleaned your face, but I wager you’d like a proper scrub.”

“Yeah." Maybe I stink. Hard to tell with my nose, right now. I’ve been breathing through my mouth for most of this conversation. Somehow, it isn’t a total turnoff for the posh Mycroft Holmes. “Thanks.”

“Of course.”

Walking is a trip, but bloody hell does it feel good to move again. The urge to frolic is only dampened by the gravity of what I’ve just gone through. I enter the bathroom at a slow pace, rather than ‘foresaid frolic. It’s tiny. Sparse. A tremor runs through my body, but I remind myself that Mycroft is in the next room.

And I didn’t die. I’m alive. With only a sore nose and some bruises to show for it. I got off pretty lucky. Thanks to Mycroft. 

When I’ve cleaned up from the shower, I walk into the bedroom to find pyjamas and a dressing gown laid out on the bed. I slip them on - they’re incredibly soft, and probably expensive. Much nicer than anything I wear. I walk into the sitting room. Mycroft is sitting on an ugly, blue denim sofa. I almost laugh at the juxtaposition of a well-dressed man on a cheap piece of what must be second-hand furniture. 

The rooms are small, the windows heavily draped, and the furnishings simple. A desk in the corner, a little round table with matching chairs in the kitchenette. A small plug-in hob, a fridge, a worktop. All of our needs in one tiny room.

Just me and him.

Mycroft Holmes, with his jacket removed and his shirtsleeves rolled up, baring lily-pale forearms with a light dusting of ginger hair. What a lovely, lovely man.

He sees me. An expression passes over his face that I can’t quite decipher, but I’d guess he’s pleased to see me.

“A shower has done you wonders,” he says. He points to a bowl beside him. “I took the liberty of making you this chicken soup. Please eat it at once. You haven’t had anything in a day. Then, should you need one, there are ice packs in the freezer for your nose.”

“Yeah,” I say, because I’m a stellar conversationalist and clearly all gumption was left lying on that icy floor of who-knows-where. I settle in beside him and pick up the bowl. It’s the perfect temperature to dig right in. “I don’t suppose you have my phone or keys?” 

“I’m afraid we took your phone into evidence. It’s ideal since you can’t have it here anyway,” Mycroft says, in a soft voice. “I have taken the liberty of acquiring you a new coat. I placed your keys in it, along with a few items I found in your other coat.”

Okay. New coat. Check. “Hey, where did McCarney take me, anyway?” I ask, between slurping noodles.

“You were in the basement of Cardiac.”

“Really?” It’s surprising - how on earth was McCarney able to sneak me in without anyone knowing?

“Yes.” Mycroft looks at his laptop. “When you texted me about where you were going, I had CCTV on you. We watched Dale McCarney put you into his car. I had agents on the way.” He closes one hand into a fist. “We lost you. CCTV isn’t comprehensive, you know. There are gaps. And strangely, Dale McCarney seems to know where they are.” He rubs his chin. “I’m beginning to think members of this organisation all know, and use that knowledge to avoid discovery. Anyway, it took six hours and forty-three minutes to discover where he’d taken you. It was...interminable.” His fist trembles. “Another hour before we infiltrated Cardiac, and the whole time I kept thinking you were dead.”

“I’m not.” I put the bowl back on the table, suddenly unable to eat. 

Mycroft looks at me. “Don’t do it again.” It's half-way to a joke, but the kernel of truth is there.

“I’ll try not to.” I think of the cold floor and not being able to move and I shudder. Mycroft moves over and takes me into his arms. He smells of spicy after-shave and petrichor. I exhale.

“What is it?” he asks, quietly. 

I bite down on the inside of my cheek. Before I can come up with a generic answer, the truth tumbles out. “One of my biggest fears is that, one day, I’ll lose control of my body to - to one of them. And not only that I will lose control, but that I’ll be forced out, and I’ll float away, lost. I’ll be lost.” I’m shaking. I try to stop it. Cross my arms and grab my elbows. “And as I lay there on that floor, paralysed, it’s like I wasn’t even there. That’s all I could think about. That’s all that was on my mind.” The memory of the shadow that walked across the ceiling creeps over me like an uninvited guest - a spider on your shoulder.

But I brush it off. I was drugged, and going out of my mind with fear. 

It was nothing.

It has to be nothing.

“Oh, Greg,” Mycroft says as his arms move around me. “I’m so sorry.”

“And the possibility of dying… He planned to kill me and make it look like a mugging. And I was almost okay with that part. Dying. Vicki was with me. I think she was there the whole time.” Mycroft’s hold tightens. I lean into him. He’s warm, and he’s solid. My trembling starts to slow. To fade. “But goddamnit Mycroft, not being able to move? Not being in control of my own arms and legs? Brought my biggest nightmare right to the surface.”

Mycroft breathes. “I’m so sorry we didn’t get there sooner.” His voice is thick with sincerity.

“No. You got there. Right before he was about to...” I take an unsteady breath. “And I’m safe now because of you. Thank you.”

He pulls back to look me in the eyes. We’re so close. His breath on my cheek, his arms around mine, his nose above mine. 

_Kiss him._

My lips part, just a little, as I glance at his mouth and—

A ringing from his laptop splits through the air.


	15. Exposure

Mycroft deflates. Chuckles. “Anthea,” he says. 

Regrettably, I pull away from him. Disorientated by the jarring jangle of the ring tone, I rub my hands through my hair, and draw in a lungful of air. I glance down at what I’m wearing, suddenly aware again of the pyjamas and the dressing gown. “Am I - am I presentable?” My voice isn’t very steady, but I steel myself for Mycroft’s reply.

Mycroft smirks. “More than. You may stay out of frame, if you like.” He answers her call. I settle the trembling of my body as her face appears on the screen. Adrenaline is a helluva thing.

“Sir. Inspector,” she says. She seems tired around the eyes, but her hair is styled in a wave and she holds her head high. 

“Hi Anthea,” I say. My heart still pounds too quickly, but the trembling has ceased at least.

“I’m glad you’re looking better.”

“Thanks.” The aching in my nose has returned, or maybe I’m just noticing it again. It feels huge. There’s gotta be paracetamol somewhere.

“Anything new to report?” asks Mycroft.

“I’ve sent you the recording.”

“I watched it. I’m going to play it for the inspector.” He pulls up another window and clicks on a link. A video screen appears. Dale McCarney is sitting at a table in an interrogation room - not any I recognise. 

Anthea enters the room. McCarney leers at her and she ignores it. He’s singing. The melody is a little odd. His singing seems a bit off-pitch. It’s eerie. 

“What have you been singing?” Anthea asks.

“Jules’ new stuff. Catchy, isn’t it?” he says, and launches into another verse. I snatch up a piece of paper and a pen to catch what lyrics I can.

_“I’m rising, rising, rising again_

_Renewed and restored in the manger of sin,_

_Place me on your altar, I am the father_

_In this transmigration.”_

McCarney finished with a grin. “Jules called that one ‘March of the Souls.’ Sorta uninspired if you ask me.”

“Very nice,” Anthea says. She’s taking notes, pretending not to pay attention, I think. “The date is October 24th, it’s a Wednesday, and this is Agent Anthea Bloom interviewing Dale Feldman McCarney of Fulham Road, London.”

I listen to McCarney as he keeps singing, swooping low with his voice. As I write, tingles start between my shoulders.

_“Let’s count the minutes until you’re mine_

_That’s thirty-two and forty-nine_

_Let’s count the seconds in between_

_Wouldn’t you know?_

_It’s lucky thirteen.”_

I throw the pen from me. Last thing I need is for Vicki to jump in. Mycroft gives me a surprised look but quickly refocuses on the laptop screen.

Anthea sighs, places the pen down, and meets McCarney’s gaze. Her eyes are blank. Flat.

“That one’s called Fifty-One and ‘O’,” McCarney says with a nod. 

A chill snaps down my spine. Urgency spins out in my gut. It doesn’t belong to me - it’s her. I’m tempted to pick the pen up again and let her at it, but clients tend to repeat themselves again and again. It’s not worth the fright I get from letting them in. Bird mask and weird symbol and some church. 

“Earlier when you were singing, you mentioned a church,” Anthea says. “Does it look anything like this one?” She pulls out the drawing. 

McCarney stops. Blinks. “Sure. But you can’t go there,” he says. 

“But can you?” she asks.

His forehead shines in the light. “You can’t make me go there.”

Anthea leans forward, her teeth gleaming like a crocodile’s. “What is it? What’s there? We’re going to find out anyway, so you may as well tell us.” She’s nothing like the Anthea I know. That Anthea is cooly polite, an intelligent and diligent PA for Mycroft Holmes. This Anthea is a predator. Every word out of her mouth sounds like a threat. 

McCarney leans back in his chair, but jerks at the end of his chains. He’s handcuffed to the table. He releases this laugh, like the cries of a warbler. “Go ahead, he’ll kill you. You’ll be _dead_.” His laughter grows in volume. “Little girl, you’ll be dead, and so will the bloke in the suit, and the copper. How’s he doing, by the way?”

Anthea doesn’t even blink. “Who will kill us? As far as I can tell, there’s nothing out there.”

He laughs again. “ _Nothing?_ Nothing is out there? Ha! That’s where you’re wrong, you stupid bunch of twats. His reach is greater than anyone’s known. You think the old gods are gone?” Spittle flies from his mouth. He smiles. Tips his chair back. “The old gods never left, and they are _terrifying.”_ He grins at Anthea. It’s awful.

“This bloke’s a treat,” I say.

McCarney goes back into singing the song. Like a horrifying lullaby. 

“ _Move aside little one,_

_A new era has begun…”_

The video ends. Mycroft closes the window. His hands are steepled. So like Sherlock. “I’m curious. What do you think?”

“The song,” I say. “I think he was taunting us. But more than that, I think he was giving us clues.” Certainty edges into words as I say, “He told us something. He definitely told us something.” Vicki continues to press at my back. I roll my shoulders.

Mycroft rubs one hand over his mouth. Anthea offers, “Sir, I’ve been in contact with Niles Herron. He has the materials and is making his inquiries. He believes he’ll have information for you by the end of the day tomorrow.”

“So soon?” he says.

“He says he has a hunch about the symbol. He’ll be in touch.”

“Hm. I suppose that’s better than nothing. Thank you, Anthea.”

“Yes, sir.” Her call screen closes. 

Mycroft settles back into the sofa, his eyes on the ceiling, seemingly in thought.

“Niles Herron?” I say.

“A historian of sorts. Of things more grim and macabre.”

“You gave him the symbol?”

“And the mask. Him and a few others. Discreetly. I’d hoped to make some progress that way. Let’s hope the man doesn’t come back to us with a load of codswallop.” 

“Okay,” I say. I stare down at the page of lyrics. Written by Jules Mathison, who must have been a member of this organisation.

The Order.

Oh!

“I didn’t tell you,” I say. “Oh, my god. I’ve - I must have blocked it out.”

Mycroft focuses on me. “What is it?”

“Someone else was there with McCarney.” The memory of the shadow crosses my mind as well, but I shove it away. 

“Someone else was in the basement?”

“Yes! It was...the voice of a man. A posh bloke, like yourself. Public school accent and all that.” Mycroft arches an amused eyebrow. I pretend not to notice. “He referred to The Order. Told McCarney to clean up his own mess. He implied that Jules Mathison was supposed to take the fall for Vicki’s death, and that by taking me, he’d fucked it up for them. _The Order.”_ It was at that point that the shadow _dripped_ from the ceiling toward my immobile body. I squeeze my eyes shut. I must have imagined it. I was drugged.

“The Order? Anything else? Is there a name for this Order?”

“God, I really can’t remember much else.” I rub my face with my hands, pushing the chill of fear down. “He was really angry with McCarney. Told him - told him to kill me and make it look like a mugging.” A shiver of anger moves through me.

Mycroft’s face blanches. His mouth flattens and his eyes glitter like stones. “I’ll tell Anthea to make Mr McCarney as uncomfortable as we can within legalities.”

I bark a laugh. A desperate, thin laugh.

He picks up his phone. “I’m sending her this information.”

“Yeah. Good.” I tunnel my fingers through my hair and stare down at the lyrics again. Was it a code? Would I need a cypher? How clever was Mathison? Not very, if he planned on recording an album about the secret doings of his secret organisation. “A puzzle. Sherlock would have loved it.”

“Mm,” Mycroft says offhandedly. “He does love a good puzzle. Perhaps I might try?”

I hand him the paper.

He studies it. “No code I recognise.” He places it on the table.

“But to be singing specifically about these things? Counting by minutes and seconds? What the hell does ‘Fifty-One and ‘O’’ mean?”

Mycroft’s face lights up. “Oh. Longitude and latitude,” he says. “We need a map.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

He pulls up a map on his laptop. “Fifty-one and zero. Thirty-two and forty-nine - minutes. Thirteen seconds. But is it fifty-one degrees, thirty-two minutes and thirteen seconds, and also zero degrees, forty-nine minutes, and thirteen seconds?” 

“Where is that?” I say, trying to follow him. Might be easier to seize upon the results than trying to follow his rush of words. Like with Sherlock.

“About one and a half hours from here. A place called Great Wakering. On the coast.” He zooms in on the satellite view. “Just from a quick perusal, I can see several buildings that may be churches.”

I stare at the screen. “Oh god, how do you _do_ that?” 

He smiles. It’s smug, and also proud.

“Your brain is so sexy."

He flushes.

I hop up. “Alright, then. Let’s go.”

“Greg. We’re not going there now.” Mycroft’s flush fades and he stands. “You’ve had quite the experience and need actual rest. It’s almost midnight. I’ll send this information to Anthea and then send her to bed. Tomorrow morning, we’ll go in with a team.” He places a hand on my shoulder. “I won’t risk you.”

I want to tell him I’m not under his command, that I go of my own volition because as far as I know, this is still my case. But I nod. He’s frightened for me. Cares about me. And that’s a lot coming from Mycroft. “Okay,” I say. “Tomorrow morning. First thing.”

“Tonight, you need your sleep,” he says.

“So do you.”

“I’ll take the sofa,” he says.

I tilt my head. “The bed fits two. And it’s not as if…”

Mycroft licks his lips. “Yes. Well, I had thought that perhaps it would be better if we waited…”

“We can lie side by side without ravaging one another, don’t you think?” I say. I’m exhausted, but I still manage a flirty smile.

Mycroft almost smiles back. But he stops. “I have absolute control of my conduct. However, I am thinking...that there are things you should know before we commence with any sort of arrangement with one another.”

“Like?”

“I...there are things, important things that I can’t divulge to you. My work -”

“I get it. You’re part of some high up governing body, likely SIS or Home Office, and you can’t tell me all your secrets.”

“Yes.” He seems oddly nervous. Flexing his fingers, unable to sustain eye contact. “It’s just that...you might take some of it personally, and I want you to know that it isn’t personal.” He places one hand on his hip as the other shoves through his hair. “Bugger, I’m not prepared for this.”

Mycroft knows something. His work? No, something to do with me. Something he has to hide. Something he can’t let me know, and feels guilty about.

I stare at that pale face, in obvious distress as he stares upward, one hand now on the back of his neck. He seems to be searching for answers on the ceiling.

I am actually a detective, as much as Sherlock liked to belittle my skills.

Sherlock, who loved puzzles. 

Who does love a good puzzle.

That’s when the pieces click into place. The world around me freezes; I’m dizzy with the knowledge. I have to say it before I second-guess myself and we end up in this awkward dance around a very large elephant in the room.

“Sherlock’s alive, isn’t he?” My ears burn and my chest is vibrating with something close to panic.

Mycroft’s gaze snaps to mine, his face as pale as a ghost. Ha.

“He hasn’t come to me because he isn’t dead,” I say, my voice quaking. “And Mycroft, you’ve talked about him in the present tense. Just now. You said he ‘ _does_ love a good puzzle.’ You said that.”

Mycroft’s mouth gapes, closes, opens again, like a fish out of water. “Greg - I -”

“It’s fine if you can’t tell me the details,” I say, steadily, though I feel like my worldview is splintering - all this time. All this time I’ve been beating myself up over not being able to help him; to save him. All this time I’ve been hard on Sally, blaming her partly for his death. Thinking Mycroft didn’t want to talk to me because of my part in it.

Having lost someone I considered a friend. 

“You fucking Holmeses.” 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “You aren’t supposed to know until he finishes his mission.”

“His mission?” I tilt my head.

“I helped him to fake his death,” Mycroft says. He pulls his shoulders back as he swallows - he has a look on his face that suggests he’s swallowing something painful. “So he could dismantle Moriarty’s web.”

Moriarty. I rub my forehead. Sigh.

“I understand if this means...if this means you want nothing to do with me. We’ll handle the case, and then we’ll part ways.” Mycroft’s voice is thick - I’ve never heard him like that. I glance at him. He looks wrecked - his eyes downcast and his face red, and his body rigid.

Sherlock is alive.

Alive.

Sherlock is alive.

Tears bite at the back of my eyes.

“You fucking Holmeses.” This time I say it with a lot of fondness. There’s no ignoring the thread of resentment, but what’s more: I am awash with relief. Of course. Of fucking course. He’s alive. Faked it. Out being a hero somewhere. A great man. 

Sherlock is _alive._

“I just wish you’d trusted me with it.” Maybe that isn't fair, but I’ve been duped. Sherlock was always good at making me look like a fool, but the two of them?

“It was for your safety, and it is paramount that -”

“I keep it a secret?” I say. “I can do that. But for my safety?”

“Yours, along with all of Sherlock’s nearest and dearest.” He still won’t look at me. He looks dejected, resigned. His shoulders sag. He slides his arms across his chest. Protective. “Moriarty had the upper hand. You mustn’t, under any circumstances, let on that you know. It could put your life back in danger.”

“You have my word. I won’t say nothing to no one.” Back in danger? I want to ask, but my mind is still spinning.

“We’ve done you wrong by having to enact the plan we did. With your job in danger - but I swear to you, Greg, I would have intervened if I thought they’d demote you or fire you imminently. I would have acted on your behalf.”

“Okay,” I say. Okay. 

And that’s when I realise it can be okay. Sherlock is _alive._ I’m alive. Maybe we’re both alive because of Mycroft? I don’t have to be sad. I don’t have to keep kickin’ myself in the arse over what happened. 

I might even forgive Sally, and why am I still holding it over her head, after all? She was doing the best she could with the information she had. As was I. And now, as Sherlock would say, I have all the data. 

“Okay?” Mycroft says. His eyes meet mine. “That’s it? Just okay?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I have to say, I’m fucking relieved. I’m angry, too. Of course I’m angry. But this - you don’t get news like this every day. I’d prefer him living. You and he had to have had good reason to pull a stunt like this, I hope?” 

Mycroft’s relief is obvious on his face, as if he were a man on death row and I had granted him a last-minute pardon. “Yes. A very good reason. I can’t -”

“Tell me what it is. Okay.”

Mycroft screws his eyes at me. “You...where’s the famous Gregory Lestrade temper?”

I chuckle. “Mycroft, twenty-four hours ago, I thought I was a dead man. And now, not only am I alive, Sherlock is too? Best bloody news I’ve had all day.” I wave at his laptop. “Especially with this bizarre mess.”

“I’m...relieved. You’re awfully magnanimous toward him. But then you always have been...” The way his voice trails, and the way he averts his gaze clues me in to something: something below the surface, behind his words.

“And I care about you,” I say.

Mycroft looks at me. Questioning. He’s reading my face in how only he and Sherlock do: like an electronic scan. I let him see what’s on my face. But then I realise it’s worthwhile to speak, “I’m not saying I’m not pissed off. I am. This - this is a lot. But what’s more, I’m happy to know he’s alive, and that you aren’t grieving. I trust that you two, as idiotic as you might be with people, came up with a plan that ultimately will make the world a better place.”

Mycroft relaxes a tiny bit; he’s still tense, still watchful and unsure. He says, “Perhaps you shouldn’t put so much trust in either of us. We’re imperfect, for all our intelligence, and our posturing.”

“I’ve never heard you be so honest, or so humble,” I say. “I didn’t realise a Holmes could be humble.”

Mycroft’s mouth works like he’s suppressing a smile. “It’s somewhere beneath the veneer of self-importance.”

“I like it,” I say. “It suits you. But I also like it when you’re confident. It’s one of the many things about you I find attractive.”

He blushes. It’s gorgeous on his skin, that delicate flush of rose petal pink. “Now, stop stalling and come to bed with me,” I say. “Nothing has to happen. Just holding hands the other night was nice.” It was. I’m eager to do it again. Usually, with men, all I expect is a quick fuck and sometimes a walk of shame the next morning, but with Mycroft, I want to take my time.

The tension slides out from his shoulders. “Very well. Finish your soup. I shall clean up and get ready for bed.” A new tension seems to take hold of him. How many men has he taken to bed?

I said we didn’t have to do anything more than hold hands.

“Okay,” I say and reach for the now cooled soup. “See you in a few minutes.”

He smiles, bows his head, and retreats to the loo.

I take a bite of soup and notice the pen on the floor from where I had flung it. Vicki’s presence has dissipated. I hurry through the rest of the soup and scoop up the pen on my way toward the kitchen. I put the bowl down beside the sink and turn to place the pen on the counter next to a pad of sticky notes.

She hits me like a freight train - and I’m no longer there.


	16. A Window into the Soul

“Greg?” A voice brims with concern. “Greg?” 

The world is grey. Like objects emerging from a fog, the cabinets of the kitchen come into view. Mycroft is beside me. On his knees. I’m sitting on the linoleum floor. Sticky notes scatter over my lap, along the sleeves of the dressing gown, and across the tiles. Black pen scribbles across each of them. 

The pen that is still in my hand. I drop it like it’s scorched my flesh. “Oh god,” I say. I look again at the notes. It’s a building. “That bitch.”

Mycroft twitches. “I assume you’re speaking of Ms Rivera.”

“Yeah.” I reach up and scratch the top of my head, which is thudding quietly now. “I didn’t think she - I didn’t think she was around, still. I - I thought it would be safe to pick up the pen and...”

“Are you alright?” he asks. He’s so close to me I can feel the heat of his body. I lean into him, pressing our shoulders together. He stays, lets me use him as support.

“I’m alright...just a little shaken is all.” My nerves are a chaotic mess, like marbles scattered across broken pavement, clashing and clattering in a discordant array. The sensation of his body next to mine is deafening the fray, softening the sharp edges and smoothing over the pathways my thoughts take.

Mycroft gathers the sticky notes, glancing at each of them. “This is a different building.”

I look. The drawings, each of them the same on every square piece of paper, are of a barn with wide double doors and the usual gambrel roof. 

“Is this...?” Mycroft points to a spire over the rooftop. 

It’s not part of the barn. It’s the spire of a church sitting behind the barn.

“The church,” I say.

“Yes. That same spire,” he says. He looks at me. “Are we alright to take this to the sofa?”

“Yeah.” I still feel the loss of it when he stands, his body no longer pressed to mine. He lends me a hand to help me up. I follow him to the sofa. I can’t help but check his facial expressions for anything like fear, or a wariness, some dark suspicion. Experiences with my dad and with Cass have taught me that witnesses rarely react well to seeing me possessed.

But all I see on his face is determination. He opens the laptop and brings up the satellite picture again of Great Wakering. The murky blue-brown of the coastline borders on green-brown stretches of fields and forest. Buildings speckle the dull colours in white and yellow and some red. Mycroft zooms in on the coordinates from the song Mathison composed. He spots two buildings beside each other, on a square of field beside the water. 

As he zooms in, I can see it. The grey barn about ninety metres from a white church. 

My mouth goes dry. “Zoom in on the church,” I say.

He does, and the spire and the doors and the windows…it’s all familiar. It’s mine. Mine from the sketch.

“That’s it,” I say. “Now let’s see the barn.”

It’s a wooden, grey barn with wide horizontal boards and a clean white trim. Classic. Old and perhaps restored. Well maintained, it seems, from our viewpoint. 

“I’ve...I’ve dreamt about this barn.” Shit. Victoria showed me in a dream, and a dark crevice in the earth opened up -

“Okay,” I say, trying to shake off the assault of heavy dread and spinning anxiety. “Okay, then. Seems she’s had reason to pester me.” Shit shit shit. “I should have remembered this.”

Mycroft watches me. “How are you feeling now?”

I lift my shoulders and shake my head. “She’s been trying to reach me. She’s gone now. She had every reason, apparently. It’s just...it’s just so goddamn violating. I wish I was used to it - I should be used to it by now. But it’s goddamn unnerving. Like my body doesn’t belong to me, I’m just renting it between possessions.” And someday, I might not get back in.

Lost forever.

I swallow. Mycroft’s hand lifts, as if to take mine. But he pauses.

I look at him. He’s in his pyjamas. I reach over and grab his hand. “I need rest,” I say. What I really need is to feel his body next to mine again.

He nods. “Allow me to help you get comfortable,” he says, and leads me to the bedroom. 

* * *

I slide under the covers, leaving enough room for Mycroft. Does he have a preferred side of the bed? Cass always went left.

It doesn’t matter now. We’ll figure it out. Figure out what’s right for us. A different nervousness settles in my stomach. My skin still crawls after the drawing session, but I need to shake it off. Let me be here in this bed, on these sheets, beside this man.

Mycroft shuts the overhead light off after switching the bedside lamp to on. The colour of burgundy silk pyjamas looks lovely against his skin.

“Hi,” I say, and open the covers, inviting him in. I’m looking forward to the warmth of his embrace. I want to kiss him, but we haven’t reached that level of intimacy yet, so I’m settling for just the touch of him. It grounds me.

He sits on the bed’s edge, so close, but not close enough. “Greg, there is something I should like to do.”

My heart lifts. “Yeah?”

“May I kiss you goodnight?” The desire is plain on his face, in the swelling of his pupils, and in the supple shape of his mouth. I flush. This man might be braver than me.

“Yeah. I want that.” I want everything. Maybe he can tell.

I shift closer, and he meets me in the middle. Our faces hover close together, eyes flicking from lips back to eyes and back to lips. I tilt my head to the side. He tilts his, but it’s in the same direction - we bump noses. Pain lances through the centre of my face. 

“Oh, good lord, I am terribly sorry. Are you alright?” His hand slides up to the side of my face, fingers slipping behind my ear, except his forefinger, which rests on my cheek, and his thumb, which touches my chin.

I snicker. The pain’s already dissipating. His touch has me eager. “Let’s try that again, shall we?”

He chuckles. I press forward, skimming smiling lips over smiling lips, until his pucker and capture mine. The kiss is tender. Loving. It’s not all-consuming; it doesn’t rip through me like a comet rips through a night sky. Instead, it envelops me like a gentle mist on a fair summer morning. Like the sun rising over rooftops and cradling me in its warmth.

It’s a kiss like none other.

My lips tingle as I apply more pressure, open my mouth to allow his seeking tongue entry. I lay back on the pillows, pulling him with me, so that his chest is on top of mine, our arms around each other, mouths melded together. The room is silent but for the meeting and parting of our lips.

It isn’t long - with his weight over me and the scent of him all around me - before lust zips up my spine like a firecracker. My cock stiffens and swells as tension pools between my hips. The warm, misty feeling changes as an urgent sense of desire swells up in me. “Mycroft,” I say, panting as I pull back. “I want more than a goodnight kiss. Is that okay?”

Mycroft makes a strangled noise, kisses my neck, presses his lips behind my ear. It’s such a sensitive area, I gasp. I move my hands to the buttons of his top and pop the first button. He backs off enough for me to continue my way down as we kiss and kiss and kiss. 

It’s grounding. I feel rooted in my body, no longer wallowing in the what-ifs and the past. Present only in this moment. In this bed. With this man who I had admired and longed for from afar. Warm flesh against mine, hot breath on my skin, ratcheting ardour from my core. I could fall in love with Mycroft Holmes. The thought catches me by surprise, a second of inattention before his searching mouth draws me from my thinking and pulls me back to the present.

I push the pyjama top from his shoulders. His creamy-white skin is gorgeous in the low lamplight. Freckles dust the surface like a sprinkling of nutmeg. The man is a treat and I could swallow him whole.

It’s not long before we’re lying together nude and marvelling at one another’s bodies. He examines a scar on my ribs. “Knife wound, 2005,” he whispers.

I chuckle. “Sometimes I think it’s a little unfair that you have a file on me.”

“I will tell you anything you ask,” Mycroft says, and kisses the scar before moving over to my right nipple. He takes it in his mouth. I bang my head against the pillow and buck my hips as pleasure radiates outward from that bit of flesh gathered in his teeth. His hand plucks at the other nipple, gently kneading and pulling.

“God, twist it,” I say.

He does, and I can’t stop myself from flipping him onto his back and rubbing my erection beside his. “I want to make you feel good,” I say.

“Just looking at you makes me feel good,” Mycroft says.

“Mycroft Holmes.” I pause in my frotting. “That is the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.” 

“You terrible cocktease, don’t stop,” he says, and shoves his hips against mine. His face is flushed and his curls are askew. He still smells of his woodsy cologne and I want to taste him everywhere.

“Can I suck you off?” I say.

“I never want you on your knees before me,” he says. “I want to look into your eyes when you orgasm. I want us to come together.”

“I just want a taste. Tell me when you’re close.” I slide down his body and nestle between his legs. He’s long, thick, with a wet head. His foreskin retracts, and his balls lay heavy between his thighs among a thatch of ginger hair. Freckles adorn his thighs, and I kiss them first, before I finally lay a tongue on his cock.

Mycroft lets out a long moan.

“Mmm,” I hum as I take his member into my mouth. I swirl my tongue over the crown and watch his face. He looks enraptured, his mouth open, his eyes shut, his jaw slack. His eyes open and catch mine. 

“Greg,” he says, and reaches a hand towards me. I grab it and place it on my head, showing him he can push a little. His fingers funnel through my hair and squeeze at the roots. He holds me there while his hips thrust and his flared cockhead meets the back of my throat. 

I love sucking cock. Even as my jaw aches and drool dribbles from my mouth, I unashamedly love it when a man shows me how he likes it best. It’s even better if I can rut against the sheets while doing it. 

A dull pain in my ribs distracts me, though.

“Greg,” Mycroft says, having thought of the same thing, apparently, as he says, “That feels amazing, but your ribs - lie down.”

I groan as I let his cock slip from my lips. “But you taste amazing.”

“You’re going to murder me,” he says, moving his hand from my head to one of my shoulders. “I dread stopping you, but also dread you having further injury. Come up here.”

I crawl up, capture his mouth in mine. Lick into him, tongues tangling. His wet cock next to mine feels like heaven. 

He rolls us over, gently. Slots his thighs between mine and lines up our erections. His left hand keeps him braced above me, and his right hand closes around our cocks and holds them tight. “God, oh god,” I say as I thrust, finding a rhythm that works for both of us. 

Mycroft moans and whimpers. He releases our cocks and places his right hand on the other side of me. He’s hot and slick with sweat. His hips piston, rubbing us together in a delicious, mind-boggling rhythm. Tension builds at the base of my cock. 

“Next time, I want you inside me,” Mycroft says, and oh, that does it. My orgasm spins out from my groin and I come with a long shout, spilling over my belly. I keep thrusting my hips, revelling in the ripples of aftershocks. 

He follows, going still, his muscles bunching, his face a rictus of pleasure. I love it. I love watching this man lose control, perspiration shining on his face, his hair a careless muss of curls, and his face twisted during orgasm. He’s beautiful. 

When he slumps down beside me, he’s careful not to put his weight on my ribs. Yet he remains close. 

My nose throbs but the rest of me revels in a post-orgasmic high and the sensation of his body close to mine.

“How do you feel?” Mycroft says, his breathing still heavy.

“Oh god. That was great. But I forgot about my nose.”

Mycroft lets out a laugh. He leans up. “Are you alright? I didn’t bump it again, did I?”

“It’s alright. Paracetamol should kick in soon.” The ache in my ribs is dull. 

“I’ll get us a flannel." I’m amazed at how he springs up, right after coming like that. I’m ready to roll over and fall asleep. 

A moment later, Mycroft’s back. He wipes my belly and my cock. Gently. I smile. I probably look like some love-struck sap, but I don’t really care. He gets in on his side of the bed as I lay back on the pillows. I’m warm, but I snuggle up against him. I open my eyes to see him looking at me. Eyes so blue, even in the dim light of the lamp.

“You make me feel safe,” I say, without even thinking about it.

Mycroft’s face changes. He looks astonished. “I...thank you. I’m honoured you feel that way. It’s...I strive to protect those I care about.” He looks away. The weight of his words causes me to frown, but I'm not ready to poke at it. Not yet. 

I press my cheek to his shoulder, careful of my nose. His lips press upon my crown. 

No nightmares come in the night.


	17. Digging Deeper

“Greg, you remember Duncan and Omar?” Mycroft gestures to the two black-uniformed men as they sit on the ridiculous blue-jean sofa. Duncan ran an eye over it that suggested his opinion matches mine - it belongs in a bonfire. 

Omar, ever the model of courtesy and professionalism, simply sat after shaking my hand. Duncan is the strong man of these two - big, thick-necked, and broad-shouldered like a slab of sun-bleached stone and every bit as pale. He tames his brown mane in a ponytail, and his bushy handlebar moustache gives his face a lot of character - as does the split lip beneath it. When Mycroft and I used to meet, Duncan and I would chat about football and work. I get the feeling he comes from a similar background as me, some asphalt and brick neighbourhood with everyone’s da on the factory line. 

Except for mine, anyway. University-learned as he was. Natural salesperson skills combined with university learning lifted him, and me, out of a London tenement and into suburban housing outside of the city.

Omar is maybe an inch shorter than me, with a whip-thin and wiry body. His eyes are dark, tending toward mirthful and pleasant, with skin the colour of amber. He also has a moustache, though his is contained and trimmed, much like his short, black hair. Omar and I talked about family - mostly his, though I talked a little about Cass. He’s got a wife and three kids that he treasures. 

Of course, if Mycroft was in the car when I was picked up, I didn’t get the chance to speak with either of them. But I never wanted for company if they were bringing me to meet Mycroft. 

“It’s great to see you both, again,” I say with a grin.

“Long time no see, Inspector,” Duncan says. “Arsenal’s laggin’, yeah?”

“Oi, steady!” I say. “No need coming into an injured man’s safe house and raggin’ on him about his team.”

Duncan laughs, a deep belly-laugh. 

“And Omar,” I say, “How’s Malika?”

“She’s taking night courses,” Omar says with a note of pride in his voice. “With the young ones growing out of our hair, she’s decided to finish her degree.”

“That’s bang on! I’m glad to hear it. And the kids?”

“Rashida’s entered sixth form, if you can believe it. She just took the BMAT.” 

“Wow, already?”

“Yes, and Dina is in fourth. Aziz in third.” He smiles proudly, with a dark shine in his eyes. 

“You must show me pictures, later,” I say. “I can’t believe how fast kids grow.” I never brought up kids with Cass. She tried to bring it up with me once, but I’m a little ashamed to say I didn’t react well. The thought of someone inheriting this thing I have...I couldn’t imagine handling my kid’s first nightmare and not knowing whether it was truly a nightmare or some ghastly visitation.

I just can’t chance passing it on.

Anthea joins us last. We gather around the tiny, scratched coffee table, taking two wooden chairs from the kitchen table to complete the circle. Mycroft makes sure I sit in the comfortable armchair, while he and Anthea take the kitchen chairs. 

Mycroft passes out small packets of paper with precise bullet points. Included are photos of people known to be involved - Victoria, Jules Mathison, Dale McCarney, and Tansy Winters. I bring them all up to speed, including the conversation I overheard, which I deliver in my Detective Inspector tone to dampen the panicky feeling of remembered paralysis.

When we get to the pages depicting my drawings, I blink. Mycroft takes over to discuss an anonymous source that provided the sketches of the symbol and the mask, and then the barn and church. 

Anthea confirms the presence of a small church building and an old grey barn behind the church along a back road in the village of Great Wakering, located in Essex County along the coast. The church is unnamed. Doesn’t seem to belong to any religious organisation.

“Gentlemen, our reconnaissance today will involve this property. We’re looking for any sign of occult doings - if we see this mask or these symbols, or anything like it, we’ll know we’re in the right spot. We may set up surveillance to determine whether this group is responsible for the death of Victoria Rivera.”

Duncan and Omar nod. I’ve never seen them so serious, Duncan’s eyebrows have drawn together and Omar is completely expressionless. 

“We believe the level of danger to be low. Anthea is on drone duty and will let us know what life, if any, is there as we near.” He collects the packets and slips them all into a briefcase. “Questions?”

“If we run into someone?” Omar asks.

“Our undercover story is that we are investors looking for a suitable property to headquarter a rising start-up.”

Duncan smirks. “All of us?”

“We’re very thorough,” Mycroft says with a smug smile. “I’d be interested to identify anyone we may run into, as well.”

“Alright, Christmas is go,” Anthea says, looking down at her phone.

“Christmas?” I ask.

“Anthea’s favourite toy,” Mycroft says. “Don’t worry, we’ll meet Christmas when we get there.”

* * *

When we pull up the lane, the church and the barn come into view. My chest hitches. They’re just like my visions, just like my sketches. It’s eerie. Not unexpected, but steals my breath just the same. They look empty. The lawn shows signs of having been mowed in the past, though now it’s brown and dry. No flowers adorn the beds or the boxes. The white church is simple. The steeple bisects the roofline of the barn behind it. 

I inhale the scent of sea air. Just over the ridge in the distance, beyond the fields, lies the ocean. 

“No parish house,” Mycroft says. Anthea holds her phone up as if taking a photo.

Mycroft wears casual clothes: jeans, with a jumper and jacket. It boggled my mind when the man emerged from the bathroom dressed like that.

“Well, I can’t very well go about this little country village looking out of place while we reconnoitre, can I?” he sniffed as I started laughing.

“I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing because you’ve given me a shock!” I protested. “I thought someone had replaced you in the bathroom. A pod person, or those plastic men from Dr Who.”

“A pod person?” Mycroft arched an eyebrow, and I went into another round of hysterics. Followed by kissing and squeezing his jean-clad arse. 

“I like this look on you.”

“Don’t get used to it,” he’d said.

I turn and sweep my eyes over his new outfit for probably the fortieth time that day. He pointedly looks away from me, but I can’t help to notice the pinking of his ears. It makes me grin. Against the wide blue sky and the October colours of the landscape, he’s marvellous to look upon.

Anthea turns to us. I rip my eyes away from Mycroft to give her my full attention. 

“As I said earlier, this property is owned by a dummy corporation. The accounts originate in Norway. It was supposed to be developed into houses. Never was. I inquired earlier in town and they say the only thing they’ve seen here is the occasional gathering of cars, like a family reunion had occurred. No one seems to know any more about it.”

“Nothing in the places we checked either,” Omar says. He and Duncan are in their usual all-black driving suits and I know each of them carries a gun.

I look to Mycroft. “Are you carrying a weapon and do you know how to use it?”

Mycroft opens the trunk. Brings out a black weapons case. He opens it. Hands me a holster. I take off my coat to put it on; the wind nips through my shirt. He places a holster on himself. I almost step forward to help him, but I figure he doesn’t need his staff seeing us being affectionate with one another. I’m determined to stay professional. Mostly.

He loads a gun from inside the case and hands it to me. I check the safety. He’s precise in his movements and focused on his task. Skilled. Practiced. Sexy.

He places his gun into his holster as I do mine. We shrug into our coats. 

We’re standing next to a wide field with hilly ground. Ribbons of rock wall weave every which way. The church is about a quarter-mile within view. 

“Have we had our fill of looking?”

“Monitors show nothing,” Duncan says from the driver’s side window. “A deer in the woods. No signatures for dogs or people.”

“How can you tell when we’re so far back?” I say. I noticed some electronic equipment in this car that the other sedans do not have. But something that can monitor heat signatures? From this distance?

Mycroft smiles at me. He tosses his chin up. “What an interesting bird.”

I look over to where he’s looking. Something circling the church stops and heads for us. As it gets closer, I realise the silhouette isn’t quite right for a bird. Then I see: it’s a drone. 

Happy Christmas.

“Technology is so fun,” Mycroft says. “Let’s get back in the car and go for a visit, shall we?”

Duncan is at the wheel. Anthea sits in the back with us. Omar gets in the passenger seat. We drive the quarter-mile down the lane and into the gravel driveway of the church, the rocks crunching from the weight of the car. 

“No sign of cameras on the video feed,” Anthea says. She’s typing on her smartphone. “Christmas is headed home.”

“Doesn’t mean there won’t be any inside,” Mycroft says. 

When we get out of the car, he pulls me aside. He. “I want you to know that we discovered that this so-called developer that holds the deed to this property has a Board of Directors. One director is a member of my club. He’s a man of great wealth and influence. That was my line of inquiry from the other day. His name is Hiram West.”

“Oh. Great.” 

“And valued members of the police are in his pocket.”

That makes my skin crawl. “Anyone I know?” Mycroft gives me a look. I sigh. “It’s someone I know, isn’t it?”

“That day I called and told you that they had given you the case as a way of creating an opportunity to demote you or suspend you…”

“Who? The Chief Superintendent?”

“No,” Mycroft says. He looks down at the ground and kicks a rock. His hands sit on his hips. His dismayed expression is like when he was trying to find the words to tell me about Sherlock. This is the Mycroft that hates having to tell me something - because it’s personal. 

“Someone closer to me.” Realisation sinks in, thick and sour. “McGill?”

He nods.

“You’re pullin’ my leg. No way.”

“I wouldn’t lie to you about this.”

Anger flares as I scrabble for equilibrium. “Yeah, not this, right? But Sherlock?”

Mycroft meets my eyes. Sucks in his lower lip as he watches me.

“Sorry,” I say, guilt flowing through me like a brook gone over its banks. “Sorry. That was a shit thing to say.” I release a loud and long exhale. McGill? DCI Edmund McGill? I raise both hands to the top of my head and rub through my hair, probably spiking it every which way. “The man isn’t easy to work for, but none of the DCIs are. He’s been…” Like a father figure. “He’s been feeding me this line about how he’s been talking on my behalf…” 

Mycroft looks at me with too much sympathy. I turn away, not able to bear him seeing me like this. “I’m an idiot,” I say. Anger and despair war with one another in my gut, like two kids on the street with sticks and squabbling words. 

“You like to believe the best in people, despite your line of work,” Mycroft says in a quiet voice. “It’s one of the things I admire about you.”

I give a slow nod and decide to push it away. Tell those squabbling kids to go home. McGill is just another disappointment in a line of disappointments. “We have more important things to think about right now.” The feel of betrayal still sits like ash on my tongue. “Let’s just focus on this.” I turn towards the vehicle. Mycroft follows.

Anthea is opening a briefcase on the trunk of the car. Wires, I realise. She hands Omar and Duncan microphones attached to an earbud. When they turn to help each other place them, she approaches Mycroft with a set. He leans forward, patient with her swift fingers as she places one part in his ear and attaches a microphone to the lapel of his coat. 

I’m next. Her fingers are icy. She never quite looks at me. The speaker in my ear is uncomfortable - I’ve never been able to wear earbuds. It gets painful after a while. 

She pulls out the display with the board of dials and buttons. Places headphones over her ears. Turns the system on. The earpiece crackles.

“Hestia testing, 1, 2, 3.” She adjusts a dial. “Prometheus, check.”

“Check,” Duncan says.

“Hyperion, check.”

“Check,” Omar responds that time.

“Aeolus, check.”

“Check,” Mycroft says.

Anthea’s eyes flick to mine. “Orpheus, check.”

I’m sure my eyes must have burst from my head like a cartoon character. 

Mycroft cringes slightly. “I had to tell her. Where the drawings came from.”

I nod, my mouth slightly dry. “Check,” I say. How fitting. It was always my favourite of the stories Grandnan told me, despite the tragic and messy ending.

“Of course, you’re none so proud as he was,” Mycroft says. The popular retelling most often omits that something displeased the gods with Orpheus - he claimed to love Eurydice, but wouldn’t choose the option of dying for her. Instead, his pride in his cleverness and skill led him to wager with the gods - a wager he lost. I sometimes tortured myself with imagining it - feeling the sunshine on my face, turning to celebrate having rescued my lost love, only to watch her fade back into the realm of the dead. 

Mycroft is right. I would have never made the wager. 

“Let’s go,” I say. “Hopefully we don’t meet any maenads.”

Mycroft purses his lips. “It is possible we are walking into a nest of cult-worshippers.”

“Well, that’s not great for my chances if I’m to play Orpheus.” The maenads, those wine-crazed worshippers of Dionysus, tore him apart. 

“Alpha Team, go.” 

Mycroft and I walk to the church. I toss him a look.

“She is trustworthy,” he says, and I notice he’s covering his mic.

I cover mine. “And the other two?”

“Know nothing. I would not be so cavalier with your secrets.”

“So only the one time then?”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Truly. But is it possible we could discuss it later?”

“Yeah,” I say. I’m not angry, exactly. Just...nervous. Thrown. 

Okay, maybe a little angry. I drop my hand from the mic. Between this and McGill, I’m frustrated. But Mycroft is doing what he believes is right. What he believes will help the mission. 

And he believes in me. 

“You and I will investigate the church.” Duncan and Omar emerge from behind the vehicle. “They’ll see to the barn.”

“Doors locked on the car, right?” I say.

“Anthea can take care of herself,” he says, with a reassuring smile, his hands clasped behind his back.

“I’m sure she can,” I say.

“She can,” Anthea says in my ear.

I smile. “Sorry.”

“No worries. I’m touched by your concern.” I detect a note of humour in her tone. 

“Okay. Let’s go.” Mycroft heads for the front door of the church. I follow.

* * *

Mycroft stands back from the church doors for a moment, seemingly examining them. 

“Are we really going to go through the front?” It occurs to me, finally, that we’re breaking and entering. Somehow that doesn’t seem important in the grand scale of things. I was kidnapped yesterday and beaten. Nearly tortured. Two people are dead. There seems to be some sort of mass conspiracy involving people in power, including my own superiors. Breaking and entering seems like a small thing now, and I was never that much of a stickler for the rules, anyway. I only made Sherlock follow them as often as possible so that my behind was safe from a chewing out. 

Sherlock. _He’s alive._ I still marvel at it. I also kind of want to chin ‘im the next time I see him.

“We’ll knock, of course. Like good citizens.” Mycroft raps at the door. Waits a moment. No answer.

“Let’s try the back,” he says. We go around until we find a little door. It’s small, brown, flanked by terracotta pots growing weeds. Like a little forgotten door, except the pavers in front of it have been swept.

Mycroft tries a window next to the door. I see him peering in, looking around at all corners inside. “I don’t see any wires. It’s still possible they alarm the door.” He looks at me. “If it is, we shall have to leave. They may think it a couple teens taking advantage of its emptiness.”

I nod. 

He comes to the door. Slides a hand inside his jacket and produces a small black bag.

“Is that a kit for picking locks?” I ask. Of course. He’s Sherlock’s brother. But I expect this from Sherlock. Not so much with Mycroft.

Mycroft smirks. “And where do you think my brother learned such a skill?”

I think about it for a minute. “Is Sherlock also a member of SIS?” Then I remember Anthea is listening in. “Or, I mean…” Well, she’d know, right?

“We trained him to be...didn’t take to the chain of command very well.”

I huff a laugh. “I can imagine.”

“He has now fully realised the position,” Mycroft says.

 _Oh._ “Is...is he in a lot of danger?” I ask, my stomach clenching.

Mycroft’s face looks sad, but only for a second before he smooths it back over to the confident mask of his. “He is. But he is clever, and he is skilled, so I have great hope of his returning home.”

My stomach flips. To have just found out that Sherlock is alive, and then to learn he could still die, is a bit of a turnaround. But then the idea of him returning _home._

“Wait, does John Watson—”

“Perhaps we could focus on the task at hand,” Anthea says over the wire.

I frown. Mycroft opens the door. He pauses at the threshold. Scans the interior, turns to look at the lintel of the door and feel around the edges. “No alarm,” he says.

“Thank goodness for that.”

The back room of the church is a study. Books fill the shelves. A large, ornate desk sits in the middle, bare on the surface aside from a cup of pens. The windows have lacy curtains and the rug is some old, ugly Persian thing. Faded and worn, like it has endured the weight of many soles. 

Mycroft pushes through the next door. I follow him into the church proper.

We come up behind the altar. It’s also bare. There’s nothing to signify a church here. The walls are bare of crosses. No stained glass. No encouraging bits of verse or artistic depictions of Biblical figures. The pews are gleaming and brown, and the windows are big and open, natural light spills in everywhere. But not a single bit of religious paraphernalia. No icons. 

Only votive candles on the table before the altar. Fresh wicks. Not a single one of them burned. Considering that this is supposed to be a little-used place, it gives me the creeps. It’s too clean. Too shiny. Too empty. 

“I’ll check the balconies,” Mycroft says, and he heads for the stairs. I move along the pews, looking up and down the rows. No hymnals. No pamphlets. For all intents and purposes, it looks like an abandoned church. Yet it’s free from scuff marks on the flooring. Not a speck of dust. No cobwebs festooning the corners. 

I hear Mycroft moving above. I round down the next aisle. Looking along the pews. Again, nothing.

Mycroft comes down the steps.

“Anything?” I say.

He shakes his head. “Hestia, report.”

“Nothing to report, sir,” Anthea says.

Mycroft frowns. “Let’s go back to the study.” 

We scan the bookshelves. Mycroft stands in the middle of the room, his hands on his hips. “Why would she show you this place?”

“I assume it’s where they have their parties.”

“I can’t decide how she would have been part of this. A willing participant? A victim? A member of the Order who became ostracised? Punished?”

A chill passes through me. “I’d say victim.” I bite my lip.

“Hm.” His gaze goes to the floor. I follow it. 

And _there._ On the carpet. The rug I’d thought was some old, ugly Persian carpet. 

It’s the _symbol._ Over and over and over. Like a strange monogram of twisted letters, connected in a chain all along the edges, and then swirling like flowers throughout the centre. “Oh,” I utter.

“Yes,” Mycroft says. He swings down and flips the carpet back. 

A door.

A door on the floor.

I stare at him and grin. “Bingo.”

Mycroft’s eyes glitter, and he smiles. 


	18. Shadows and Haunts

The lock is easy to pick. Mycroft heaves the door open, and I help him to prop it upright and snap the elbows in place. Stairs lead into the darkness.

“Hestia, we’ve found a basement door hidden by the carpet in the study behind the altar,” Mycroft says. “We’re heading down.”

“Copy.”

Mycroft gets out his phone and turns the light on. I reach into my pockets - it’s my new coat, and it’s a lot nicer than my old coat. I get out the little torch I carry. I turn it on and I go down the steps first. Mycroft almost holds me back, but I give him a look. He steps back and bobs his chin. 

It’s a tunnel, rather than a basement. Pitch Black. Dry, but very cold. Nothing along the walls but cinder blocks. The floor is poured concrete.

“We’re no longer under the church,” Mycroft says as we walk. “We’re headed for the barn.” The soft pad of our footsteps are almost too quiet in this darkness.

Fragments of my dreams flash ahead of me: Vicki and the ground opening up. The crumble of a fiery building into a yawning crevasse, the echoing cries of frenzied crows spinning in blackness, Vicki’s screaming as black sludge drips from her lips and the sparks of flames build up her throat -

I can’t breathe. It’s like a tomb. Stuffy. Closed in. Cold.

A pressure builds behind my ears. A niggling in the back of my head. _Victoria_.

She’s frightened. 

_Go away._

My heart rate accelerates. I hear Mycroft behind me, but before me, is it Vicki? Melting from the shadows with burnt and blistered flesh? I blink. Nothing appears in the beam of torchlight. I blink again, fighting the deluge of fearful thoughts. What’s next? The masked man popping up, mouth opening wide to swallow us down? Attacking us, and I being the only one who can see him?

_Because it’s not real._

Images of an ash-filled meadow and a burning building pass before my eyes. 

Then a warm weight settles on the small of my back. Mycroft’s hand.

“Orpheus, are you alright?” Anthea’s voice in my ear.

“Yeah,” I say, in a soft huff. Could she tell I was sinking into a pit of fright? 

“No one else can hear this communication. It’s just you and me,” she says. “I can hear you breathing. I need you to relax. Let Aeolus help you if you need it.”

“Yeah,” I say. Mycroft must have deduced that I’m speaking to Anthea because he doesn’t say anything. 

It seems too long before we step into a widening of the hallway - a round room bisected by the long hall. A door sits to the left.

“We’ve gone about 50 metres,” Mycroft’s voice cuts through the darkness. “Maybe a little less. There’s a round room here, with a door.” He’s speaking for Anthea’s benefit.

He examines the handle of the door. Explores the doorframe with his light before trying it. He opens it, and we step into the room. Cool, stale air hits my skin, even colder than the tunnel. In the room is a clothes rack. Long, dark robes hang on each hanger. 

“Well, if that’s not evidence of a cult,” I say, voice a little shaky, but at least now I can focus on some objects in the room rather than the eerie, everlasting sensation of sinking further into a hall of darkness.

“Hestia, can you hear us?” Mycroft asks.

“You’re breaking up now. I hear bits,” she says.

“We’ve found a room with what appear to be ceremonial robes.”

I shine the torch around. The doorframe is engraved with symbols. “Look. These are different from the one we’ve been seeing.”

Mycroft peers closer. “They’re druidic.”

“Like human-sacrificing druids?” I ask.

“I’m sure modern-day druids would have something to say about that,” Mycroft says. “I’m certain this is a cult that has subverted the original meanings of these runes.”

I wish I had my phone again so I could take pics. “Will you take photos?” 

Mycroft takes them. Likely he can put them all to memory, but I like to look at pictures. I need solid evidence. Not all of us can have eidetic memories.

“So, runes, ceremonial robes, an empty church, and who knows what in a barn. A secret tunnel. This gets more fucked up all the time.”

“Mm,” Mycroft says. “Let’s continue down the tunnel.”

The sense of disquiet in the pitch-black cold agitates me, scratches at me like a furious insect bite. Victoria is at my back and she hates where we are just as much as I do. I have the sense that eyes are following me, but I can’t place the direction they come from.

Could Mycroft’s sister be following us?

The long walk is strenuous, the darkness enveloping us despite the warm blades of our torches. I feel as though the inky blackness is erasing us, starting with the fringes of our clothes and working its way in an amoebic lurch of swallowing shadows.

“I feel a breeze,” Mycroft says. I feel it too - like a cool whisper across my skin. It’s almost a relief.

“Must be another door.” I hope Mycroft doesn’t hear the quiver of my voice.

When we reach a set of stairs, Mycroft knocks on the door overhead. “Hestia, let them know it’s us.”

“Copy.”

We feel around for a latch and find it locked. A knock sounds.

“Sir?” It’s Duncan’s voice.

“Is there a locking mechanism on the other side of the door?” Mycroft asks. “Have Omar undo it.”

A moment and some clicking later, the door swings open, letting in the light. I blink in the force of it. Duncan lends a meaty paw and helps us out.

“Cool trick,” he says.

Straw covers the floor. We’re in a stall. The wood is the large, heavy beam type that looks like a person would end up with a handful of splinters if they touched it. 

I swallow the fresh, straw-sweet air in grateful gulps.

“We found a room with ceremonial robes below,” Mycroft says. “Runic symbols on the doorframe. I’m sending you copies now, Hestia.” He gets out his phone. “We’ll show them to the suspect later.”

“Copy,” she says.

“Nothing here?” Mycroft looks at the two men. Omar and Duncan stand with their hands folded in front of them, as if awaiting orders. 

“Place is clean,” Duncan says. Omar nods.

“Very well then,” he says. “Make it look like we’ve not been here. Greg and I have to straighten out the rug in the church and lock up. Meet you back at the car in ten.”

He heads back in the passageway. I halt. For just a second, a glimmer of a figure - Vicki? - appears. Shakes their head. 

Disappears.

“Come on, we don’t have much time,” Mycroft says briskly. 

I make my feet move forward. My jaw aches. I keep my eyes peeled for other fleeting apparitions.

We’re several metres in when Mycroft says, “What is it?”

“Uh, nothing, I guess.” I peer into the darkness ahead of us. I’ve pointed the torch to my feet as we walk. “Thought I saw something.” It feels like Victoria’s fingers are scrabbling at the back of my head. The sensation of being watched has settled in again. 

“You’re not convinced you didn’t.”

“How can you tell?”

“I observe.” 

I smile. The answer is so Holmesian. “Well, I never get true visitations when I’m awake, unless I go into the trance - while drawing. But sometimes I know they’re with me. Lingering.”

“What does that feel like?” he asks.

“Terrifying,” I say. “When I draw, I’m not there. I start, and something else takes over. And then I’m unconscious - like I’ve blacked out.” I’d done it in front of my mates a couple times. People thought I was on drugs or needed medical attention. Cass used to slap me awake, which didn’t help a thing. My father -

Well, that happened only one time, and ever since then, I’ve pushed all drawing implements as far away as possible. I instead have “controlled sessions,” where I can draw uninterrupted.

“When they linger, it’s sometimes fine. Other times, it feels like a threat,” I admit softly. “And right now, she’s scared. And it’s scaring me.” 

Mycroft is quiet for a moment as we walk, the soft touch of our soled shoes on the concrete the only sound in the corridor. The darkness presses in on me. I shine the light around us. I can’t shake this feeling that someone is watching us. 

“Is there any way for you to control it?” Mycroft asks.

I ignore the sense of being watched to gather my thoughts. “Drawing is how I control it, or mitigate it, somewhat, anyway,” I say. “Otherwise I get really tetchy and the dreams get worse, and… I don’t know. I’d rather allow it to happen, then for it to happen to me while I’m in the middle of taking a witness statement or something awful like that. It’s like releasing pressure with a valve. If I ignore it, the whole thing might blow.” And I might never get control again. Like I’m not even there.

“I see. And what did you see just now at the doorway?”

“I, um…” I laugh. “I thought I saw Vicki shaking her head at me.”

“Hm,” Mycroft says. Nothing passes between us for a moment. I move the light around to check for figures in the dark. “Why don’t you tell me something? Perhaps it will take your mind off of where we are.”

“Like what?”

“Something from your childhood. Something I wouldn’t find in a file.” Humour laces his voice. “Hestia, please mute Orpheus’ mic on your end.”

“Yes, sir,” she answers.

I release a breath. “My father thrashed me once.” It's something I've told no one, but now with only the soft beams of our lights to witness it, I let the words tumble from my mouth. “I wasn’t there, and then I was, and I was being pummeled by his fists.”

Mycroft inhales sharply. 

“He never touched me again,” I say. “He grew up with Grandnan during her practice, right in the sitting room of their house. My granddad was older, and he liked to spoil her. I think he was kind to my dad, too, but I don’t know much about it. Anyway, my dad grew up around all this spiritualism, and he had none of it. You know?”

Mycroft clears his throat. “He didn’t carry the same...ability you and your grandmother share?”

“No. And then when I started...well, it started with my crayons. She knew it for what it was, and I think it both scared and angered him. I think...I think she kept my ability from him for several years, but he was bound to find out eventually.”

“And when he did?”

“He wanted it stopped. He wanted me to be normal.” I swallow. “But it was like the floodgates had opened. And my nan was teaching me how to handle it. Or at least, she was trying to.” I sigh. “I think, I think if she had lived longer, I wouldn’t be such a mess now. I would have learned how to control it. After she died, it was just me and him. And everything got worse. He didn’t know how to handle it. He hated it. I ran away. Lived in a tenement with Tristan and his family.”

“Tristan?”

“My best mate. We got in more trouble than I would have liked. Trouble that might have prevented my entry to the Met.” Tristan, whose smile was as bright as day and whose eyes glinted like the night sky. “It was him that got me on the straight and narrow. A junkie named Joe Hallet knifed him, and the cops did nothing.”

“Tristan...visited you?”

“He did.” I can still feel his arms, strong and solid somehow, holding me as I wailed. Asked him not to let it be true. His blood stained my shirt. When I woke up on the mattress on the floor of his room and saw his bed empty, I hated myself in that moment. He’d gone out without me because I’d been too drunk and high. If I had been with him…

But I also hated the cops who thought his life wasn’t worth the investigation into Joe Hallet after I’d given them the anonymous tip.

“Have you ever found someone like you?”

“No. I’ve tried...you know I visited a few psychics. Fakes, all of them. Not a single true psychic among them.” It was incredibly disappointing. “No one like me. Or my nan. I see claims on forums online and stuff, but nothing that rings true. But it can’t have been just us, right? There must be other people like us out there.”

Mycroft doesn’t answer. He listens, and a flood of gratefulness washes over me. 

I release a breath. I’m ready to tell him. “I think something else is here. Something - something I’ve never felt. I think it might be dangerous.”

Mycroft pauses.

“Keep walking,” I say.

Mycroft keeps pace with me.

“I just want to get out of here.” Before we’re swallowed up.

Something ice-cold touches my neck, like the feather-touch of chilled fingers. My lungs shrink as I gasp. “Mycroft,” I manage.

His hand, a warm hand of smooth, alive flesh, grabs mine. “We’re almost to the end, Greg. Hold on to me.”

I squeeze his hand tightly as my breathing grows ragged.

“Almost there,” he says. “Listen to my voice, watch the light. We’re walking down this tunnel together.”

Is it like when Hades snatched Persephone and carried her into the Underworld? Or is it Orpheus and Eurydice?

 _Neither._ We walk side by side. Hand in hand. While something watches us and Victoria fades away, frightened, we’re reaching the end of the tunnel.

I’m tempted to look behind me. But that was Orpheus’ mistake, wasn’t it?

“Go on,” he says when we reach the steps. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Like Eurydice. I hold his hand tighter. “Don’t let go of me,” I say.

“Never,” he says. 

I step up and out into the light of the study, his hand still gripped in mine. It’s not until I hear his shoes hit the floorboards that I turn around, clasping his hand like a vice.

He slides his arms around me. Presses his nose to the side of my head. “Greg,” he murmurs. “What it must have been like for you all this time.”

A sob almost erupts from my chest. My breath hitches and I melt into his embrace. “This...this is the worst it’s ever been. But I’m - I’m glad for you.”

Mycroft kisses my temple. “I’m glad I’m here, too.” After a moment of holding me, he says, “Hestia, you may unmute Orpheus. We’ve emerged from the tunnel.”

A quiet click in my ear tells me she’s done so. “I told you he would support you,” her voice sounds in my ear. I smile.

I hazard a look at the open door leading to the tunnel. Pulled back and set on its hinges, the rug piled behind it. The steps fading into the darkness. Nothing’s there. I’m uncertain what I’d expected to see, and am half relieved.

And still half-frightened.

* * *

The ride from Great Wakering to London is long. Despite everything that happened in the tunnel, I fall asleep. When I wake, it’s to us dropping Anthea off in front of a building I don’t recognise. I don’t ask. Duncan drives us to the parking lot. This building is where they’re holding Dale McCarney.

We get dressed in the back of the car. My mind wants to examine everything that happened down in the tunnel - the imaginings, the fear, the sensation of something else there, that twat McGill, - and instead, I turn to humour.

“Oooh, this is straight outta Men In Black,” I say, holding up the suit. It’s an exact match of the suits Duncan and Omar wear.

Mycroft chuckles. “If you like.”

His eyes don’t leave mine as I undress. I watch Mycroft slide his tongue over his bottom lip. God, I want to kiss it. It’s delicious. Sex might be a better coping mechanism than humour. 

I close the zipper over my rising interest, but I waggle my eyebrows at Mycroft as I do it. “Raincheck?”

Mycroft huffs a laugh. “I think you can count on it.”

His own bulge is looking rather large. 

He’s back in his three-piece suit. As I fumbled with putting on a suit that fits me better than most of my own, he’d smoothly slid into his like it was a second skin.

When we emerge from the car, I line up with Duncan and Omar almost automatically. Mycroft’s ruffians, I think, and grin at the guys. Omar snorts as if he can read my mind and Duncan shakes his head and looks amused. 

Mycroft walks forward, and we follow. I hang back as he slides a pass to various guards and checkpoints. Try to look serious. Maybe on the edge of boredom. I don’t look at Duncan or Omar because despite my being a professional, if I look, I’ll probably giggle. 

I have no idea what’s got into me, honestly. I’d like to blame it on Victoria, but these feelings aren’t hers. They’re mine, and I’m obviously cracking.

We enter a room with a two-way mirror. I look in. Dale McCarney sits at a table with his grey hair in a messy ponytail. His hands are cuffed to a waist chain. Must have been causing some trouble.

Anthea enters the room, a folder in her hands. She’s poised. Heels back on. Skirt. Matching suit jacket. Must have stopped in a bathroom to change somewhere. She sits at the table and scoots her chair in. Presses play on a recorder.

“Hi, Mr McCarney,” she says. “Did you enjoy your meals today?”

“Fuck off,” he grumbles.

“Gladly. As soon as you tell me more about this place.” She spreads out an array of photographs - print-outs from Mycroft’s phone.

McCarney’s eyes go wide. He jerks back in his chair. “You can’t go there without a warrant! Oh my god, what have you done! He’ll be so angry!”

“Who?” Anthea asks in a nonchalant way as she looks at the photos. 

“The Deathless One. Oh god,” he says as he presses his face into his hands. Still cuffed, his hair falling loose from his ponytail. “I’m gonna be killed for this, I’m gonna be killed.”

“Like Jules Mathison was?” she asks.

McCarney’s head snaps up. His eyes are still wide, feral and fearful. “The Deathless One will come to me in the cell. He’ll do it. Just like he did to Jules.”

“Who went to Jules’ cell?”

“Him! I can’t - I can’t say his name. He’ll find me here.”

“Who is this person?” Anthea says. “Can you tell me what he looks like?”

“Person!” McCarney barks. “As if. He’s no ordinary person, you stupid twat, he’s a god! And his reach…” He glances around. “You can’t leave me alone in here. You have to put me on suicide watch. I don’t know how no one stopped Jules, but it wasn’t him. He didn’t do it.”

“He didn’t do what?”

“Kill himself!”

“He hung himself in his cell with the drawstring of his pants,” she says.

“But it wasn’t him!”

“Then who was it?”

McCarney frowns. Stares down at the floor.

“How can I help to protect you from the same fate if you don’t tell me who it is that we’re supposed to watch out for?”

“He’s not a man,” McCarney says. “And if I speak his name, or tell you anything about him, he’ll know where to find me.” He looks her in the eye, saliva on his lips and a gleaming mania in his grey gaze. “You can’t go back there. It’s not safe.”

“Who will know? There were no cameras.”

McCarney laughed. “He was watching you. He doesn’t need cameras. That’s his home.” He laughs again. “He’s always home.”

I shudder. Something was watching us in the dark. 

Mycroft places a hand on my shoulder.

“Who is?”

McCarney shakes his head. “I can’t say. I can’t. He’ll find me. Please put me on suicide watch.”

“Do you plan on killing yourself, Mr McCarney?”

He shakes his head again, hard. “No. But he’ll do it for me.”

“What are the robes for?”

McCarney says nothing.

“What do these symbols mean?”

“I don’t know.” He’s quiet. Like he’s resigned.

I believe him.

“Mr McCarney, it will help your case if you can give me the answers I need.”

“Just send me to trial.”

“For kidnapping and assaulting a police officer? Willful obstruction? You won’t do anything to help us help your case?”

“I can’t.” He stares at her. Shrugs his shoulders as he shakes his head and says in a pitiful voice, “I can’t. I want to live.”

“Who’s coming for you, Mr McCarney?”

McCarney sighs. It’s as if all the air and fight has gone out of him. “Vengeance. Death. It matters not.” He meets Anthea’s gaze again, staring at her as if willing her to believe him. “He’ll find another child.”

“Another child?” she says.

“I only hope my death is quick.” 

_Victoria._

“What does the child have to do with it?” Anthea asks.

McCarney hums, shaking his head. 

“Mr McCarney, won’t you help us protect the innocent?”

His humming gets louder. Tears stream down his cheeks. “I’ll have to throw myself upon his mercy.” He looks at her again. “And so will you.”

It’s a moment of her sitting there, staring at him. 

“And Victoria Rivera?” she asks.

McCarney narrows his eyes. 

“How does she fit into all this?”

McCarney looks at his lap.

“And who was the second man?”

He snaps up to look at her.

“When you kidnapped and assaulted the detective inspector, who was the second man you were speaking to?”

A strange look passes over his face. “No one,” he says.

I frown. “There was someone,” I say. Mycroft places a hand on my shoulder.

“I was the only one there,” he says in a flat voice.

“We know that’s not true.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, and turns his head to the mirror. “I don’t know who you’re talking about!” He shouts at us. I know he can’t see us, but the thick shadows of the room have me thinking about the eyes that watched us in the dark of that tunnel.

Anthea leaves without saying a word.

I look at Mycroft. Mycroft’s eyes are on McCarney. “What do you think?” I say. My mood has completely soured again. 

“That this is a devil of a business.”

The door to our room opens and Anthea enters. “He creeps me out,” she says. 

Mycroft glances at her, and I can see a field of fondness there. I half-expected him to tut her for such a declaration, but he doesn’t.

I glance back in the room, and jump back. 

Behind McCarney’s chair, a shadow stretches up, tall and threatening. 

“Who—“ I start.

It disappears. As if I’d never seen it.

Mycroft glances into the room and at me. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” A chill ripples down my spine. I wipe my eyes, and turn from Mycroft. “Nothing.”


	19. Fragile Things

“Home sweet home,” I say as we enter the safehouse. The way back had been full of twists and turns, to avoid a tail and CCTV, Mycroft told me. It gives me time to think about everything: McCarney’s strange behaviour, his words - the Deathless One? What the hell? Oh, and let’s not forget that some bigwig is somehow involved, and has my boss in his pocket. Which makes me want to throw up.

“By the way, what have you told my boss?” I ask.

“You were assaulted, Greg,” Mycroft says. “You’re in convalescence with a family friend out in the countryside.”

“Oh,” I say. “Oh man, I bet Sally is going nuts.” No way to reach me.  _ Sally. _ Is McGill a threat to her?

“You’ve sent her some text messages assuring her you’re in the best of hands,” he says with a smile.

I stare at him.

“Yes?” he says. He arches an eyebrow, but falters halfway through, as if he realises: he may have overstepped. His face smooths.

“Uh-huh,” I say. “Good thing I like you so much. But next time, allow me to talk on my own behalf, right?”

“Uh, right,” Mycroft says, and works his mouth a bit. “My apologies. Ah, as far as she and DCI McGill know, you were in hospital, and then whisked away by a family friend. The hospital has your records as proof, which DCI McGill has seen.” 

“And what about the case?”

“Sally Donovan is the lead in the case now, with McGill holding her hand. I believe they have dropped it to pursue other cases, but no doubt they’ll close it soon. Mr Mathison’s widow is fighting them on the charges against her husband.”

“Jesus,” I say. “They can’t be seriously considering a posthumous trial?”

“I very much doubt it. I would guess this is a matter in which there is no hurry with the paperwork to drop the charges.” 

“Yeah,” I say, but the cold fingers of guilt have wormed their way into my stomach. “I’d like to talk to Sal, though. If I can.”

Mycroft pauses. Brings out his phone. Types a few buttons. “You can press ‘Call,’ and it will go to her line. It will appear as your number on her phone.”

“You big government blokes are just a little creepy,” I say, as I grab the phone. Mycroft only smiles.

I hit ‘Call’ and the line rings. 

“Greg?” Sally’s voice is a mix of breathy relief and screechy concern. “My god, how are you?”

“Alright, I’m alright.”

“I still can’t believe it. Also, how’s family treating you? I wasn’t even aware you have any family.” The suspicion rings loud and clear in her tone. She knows my mum’s passed. That I don’t talk to my dad. 

“It’s all good, Sal,” I say. “I’m more worried about you.”

“Me? Why’s that?”

I don’t have a good answer. “Listen, you know, that despite everything, at the end of the day, I trust you. And you trust me?”

“I - yes. I trust you.”

“You remember during the Doris Evans case, I got a hunch that we were missing something. That Tiffany locket?”

“Yeah. That was incredible.” She speaks softly. “You just...thought she’d be the type to have sentimental jewellery. It was like you plucked it out of the air. She was missing her locket. It’s what clinched the case.”

“You trusted me. It was just a hunch, and you trusted me.”

“What’s...what is it, Greg?”

“You remember everything I told you about Mathison?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not just a gut feeling. I know it. He’s not our murderer.” Mycroft’s eyebrows raise at me. “But I can’t talk about it. Not over the phone. And I can’t see you in person. I’m just telling you to be careful. Watch your back.” 

“What are you going on about?”

“I can’t say. But neither of our suspects are it, Sal. Get me?” I think of Del Rivera. Widowed, and now childless. What’s life got for him now, aside from the music?

And even that might be tainted. 

I really hope he has friends. “And do me a favour. Watch out for Del.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” She sounds exasperated. I can’t blame her.

“Just check in on him. He’s alone, you know?”

“Mm.” She releases a tired sigh. “Okay. I’ll check on him.”

“Thank you. You’re a star.”

“It really would help if you could give me some detail.”

“Just don’t mention this conversation to anyone.  _ Anyone. _ You get me?”

A pause. Then, “I get you.” A tense admission.

“If anyone asks, we talked, I’m resting up from the assault.”

“Are you okay?” she asks, her voice small.

“Yeah. I’m okay. Thanks for asking. Now, do me a favour and be careful.”

“I will.”

“I will explain everything when I can. I gotta go now. Have a good night.”

“Goodnight, Greg.”

I hang up. Hand the phone back to Mycroft and turn to the sofa to flop down on it. 

“She’s a good egg,” I say. “Even for all her sniping. Even for what she thought of Sherlock. Her pride was hurt. She has to work harder than anyone to earn respect.”

“I understand,” Mycroft says. “Your compassion for her does you credit.”

I rub my temples. “Well, I hope she’ll be alright. We’ve got other things to think about.” I turn my attention back to what I’ve been thinking about the entire ride over here. McCarney’s very real fear - I don’t think it’s just a bid for an insanity plea. He’s truly afraid of something. He’s convinced someone will try to kill him in jail, and he seems to think that’s what happened to Jules Mathison. The Deathless One - who is that?

And the business with the baby?

“D’you suppose this is some Rosemary’s Baby rot?”

Mycroft snorts. “I think I might prefer the idea of some deranged zealots believing a girl’s baby is the devil incarnate, rather than sacrificing the poor thing.”

A shiver of disgust flashes through me.

Mycroft is reading something on his phone. “Greg, it seems we have a potential lead.”

My body sparks with excitement. “Yeah? What is it?”

“One of our contacts for the interpretation of the symbol. A historian out of the south end of London. Niles Herron - you’ve heard me mention him before. Says he has a theory as to what our symbol signifies, and believes it is supported by the look of the mask.”

“Thank goodness,” I say. “We can see him?”

“First thing tomorrow,” Mycroft says, as he types into his phone. “I’m setting it up now.”

I open the files on the coffee table. Glance over the photos, the written reports. The map marked with the barn and church. “I hope this historian has some helpful answers for us.”

“If McCarney is a member of an occult group that believes in some kind of old god, I’d be interested in finding out more about that god.”

“I don’t disagree. I just hope it points us in the right direction. If McCarney kills himself or continues to be unhelpful, I’m not sure what else we can do, aside from stake out the property in Great Wakering.” I scratch my chin. “And just how long am I to be convalescing for?”

“Two weeks, according to your doctor’s note.”

“Two weeks. Christ.” I flounce against the back of the sofa and stare up at the ceiling. “I hope this is over before then. I can’t take two weeks of visitations.”

“You didn’t dream last night,” Mycroft murmurs.

I look at him. “Yeah. I didn’t.”

“Maybe it was our extracurriculars,” he says. He doesn’t look at me, but I can see he’s trying not to look amused. 

“Are you suggesting something?” I say. “Maybe Vicki just felt like being nice and giving me a night off.” 

Mycroft looks at me then. “Maybe. Do you think she might favour you enough to give you a second night’s rest?”

I frown. “Not likely. I’m sort of shocked by last night’s rest. But I think we’re on the right path now. Maybe that’s why she’s settled some.”  _ I hope. _ But then I look at him. Realise where this conversation has been headed. He wants it, but he’s trying to be cautious and caring. 

Hell, I want it. And he should know that. “But we should probably test your hypothesis anyway.”

A slow smile spreads across his face.”If you wish it, I am certainly amenable.”

I grin. “I do like a good hands-on experiment.”

“Don’t we all,” Mycroft says.

“C’mere,” I say. “Get me out of these clothes.”

“I think you look rather good in them,” he says and slides into my lap.

* * *

I wake, thirsty. 

Mycroft’s hand covers mine beneath the covers, his soft snores filling the air. I smile as I slide away from him and slip out of the bed to pad into the kitchen. 

As I enter the main room, a figure emerges from the shadows. I clench my fists, and bend my knees, ready to growl a warning and defend, if necessary.

Vicki’s face is limned in the diluted light from the window. 

“Christ,” I say and push my hands through my hair. “Am I dreaming?”

It’s not the main room anymore, it’s the long, cold corridor leading from the church to the barn. Bending to the instinct to protect her, I reach out. When I do, I’m surprised to find in my hand a pale, green leaf. 

She approaches me. Cups my hand with hers. I can’t feel her skin, but a weight rests against mine, like the push from wind. She closes my fingers over the leaf, and then looks over her shoulder, tosses her chin in that direction.

I follow her line of sight. We’re back in the meadow of ashes, and there, the tree grows still. The leaves along its branches are the same as the one in my hand. 

“What’s important about the tree?” I don’t recall a tree around the real-life church and barn. Only here in this space do I find this tree, in these visitations with Vicki. 

Of course, she can’t answer. She lets go of me and steps back. I clutch the leaf.

“Are we at least on the right track?” 

A small, downward tilt of her chin. 

Relief opens up in me like the opening of a flower, soft and miraculous. 

Then her eyes snap to something behind me, and her eyes widen, and her mouth opens to scream.

I turn—

“Greg?”

I’m standing in the dark. As my eyes adjust, I can make out the bed, the nightstand, and the lamp that sits upon it.

“Greg?” It’s Mycroft.

“I...I’m awake.”

A pause. A shift on the bed, a creak from the bedsprings. “Do you sleepwalk?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so.” I look around, despite the fact I can barely see a thing in this room with the lights out. “I’ve never done...I don’t think I’ve done it before.”

“Come to bed,” he says. “Were you dreaming?”

“Vicki,” I say. I numbly get into the bed. He pulls the covers over me and wraps his arms around me. Pets my hair. Kisses my forehead.

“Did she show you anything?”

I think of the tree, and the fragile, tiny leaf in my square palm. Crushed, most likely, when I closed my fist in the fear of what Vicki was seeing behind me.

“Nothing that makes sense,” I mumble. 

“Rest. We’ll talk about it in the morning. Maybe make some sense of it, then.” His breath blows warm on my brow.

With his soft sighs of sleep beside me, I drift, and the feathery sensation of a leaf sits in my hand. Vicki’s face, contorted with fear, haunts me in the dark shapes writhing on the ceiling. 

I watch the shadows until the room grows brighter with morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Only ten chapters left! Thank you so much for reading, and leaving comments and kudos. 
> 
> It's gonna start picking up for the third act, so please enjoy this small respite. <3


	20. Pharmakos

This time, Omar drives. The divider is down. Duncan seems like he’s trying to stretch out in the passenger seat, though I can’t imagine how that much man can fit comfortably in any car.

“They’ve been taking turns keeping watch,” Anthea says. Turns out they’re all staying in a flat below us. I wonder if they’ve heard our activities, and decide not to look straight at Anthea as she talks about their routines. “Duncan will probably sleep on the way there, and Omar on the way back while Duncan drives.”

“Well, I’m glad they’re getting rest.”

“Me too,” Duncan calls from his seat.

Mycroft brings something up on his laptop. “I want you to take a look at this man. This is Hiram James Alexander West III.”

“That is a ridiculous name,” I say and take the laptop.

Mycroft’s lips lift. “I suppose you might say the same of William Sherlock Scott Holmes,” he says.

I stare at him. “You serious?”

“That’s not nearly as splendid as Mycroft Rudyard Vernet Holmes,” Anthea says, her face completely neutral as she stares at her phone. A deep chuckle sounds from the passenger seat up front. Omar glances at me in the rearview mirror. The crinkle around his eyes suggests he finds it all very amusing. 

Mycroft is shaking his head at Anthea, a fond smile gracing his face. “Remind me to reassess your benefits package.”

A bright smirk crosses her face. “I am a benefits package.”

Mycroft snorts. “I suppose that’s true.” He turns his attention back to me. “Hiram West is the member of my club who is at the end of the paper trail for the dummy corporation.”

“How’d you find his name?”

“The banker he used was amenable to bribes.”

I roll my eyes and look at his photo. He’s older, grey-haired, with spectacles and a double-chin. Looks like any other well-to-do toff. 

I look at Mycroft. Well, maybe not my well-to-do toff.

“So, what else do you know about this guy?”

“Once married. A widower. No children, though I am following a line of inquiry wherein a maid claimed a young Hiram West forced himself upon her, and she gave birth to a child.”

“She still alive?”

“No, and the adoption agency she used to surrender the child is long defunct. I have agents investigating friends and family. Not sure that’ll get us anywhere.”

“What else?”

“He’s very wealthy. Lives in Belgravia. Is a member of some prestigious organisations, as well as the Diogenes.”

“Which is how you know him.”

“Yes. And, from time to time, we are present at the same galas.”

“You attend galas?”

Mycroft gives me an amused look. “I know I must be full of surprises.”

“You are.” I look at Anthea. “Does he dance at these galas?”

Her lips twitch as her twinkling eyes meet mine.

“Getting back to the case at hand,” Mycroft says, “Hiram West is not particularly known for philanthropy, but neither is he known for stirring up scandal and drama. He lives a pretty quiet life, aside from the one run-in with the maid.”

“When did his wife die?”

“Some fifteen years ago.”

“Friends? Brothers and sisters? Ever seen with Jules Mathison or at Cardiac? Doesn’t seem like the type, huh?”

“One younger brother living on the continent. Seems they are estranged. Never seen at Cardiac, as far as I know, and never with Jules Mathison. Doubt they’re in the same crowd. This is the interesting thing, though. He was at Tansy Winters’ last benefit.”

“Was he?”

“Yes. Interesting, right? I must say, I never pegged him as sympathetic to the plight of animals.”

“Hm.” Tansy’s edgy fear seemed to cloud our many interactions. She knows more than she’s letting on. Was she a member of the Order? Did she lie when she saw the drawing of the barn and church?

“Ah,” Mycroft says. “It seems we have arrived.”

* * *

The bookshop is cramped and dusty like many used bookshops. Shelves are neatly organised though full. They create an imposing maze of towers where a person must wind their way about in hopes of finding a section that interests them.

I expected someone much older than the young, bespectacled man at the front of the store. The bloke’s in his late twenties, maybe, with hair shorn close to his head, reddish-brown skin, and a waistcoat. It’s more modern looking than most waistcoats, almost like a slim, unadorned corset over a white buttoned shirt, and skinny-fit grey trousers. His movements are as fluid as a dancer’s as he shuts the door behind us and flips the sign to ‘Closed.’

“Mr Holmes,” he says and shakes Mycroft’s hand. “Excellent to meet you. And you must be Detective Inspector Lestrade. Welcome to my humble bailiwick.” His voice could cut glass.

“Mr Herron, thank you for agreeing to meet with us,” Mycroft says. 

“I must say, I am most intrigued by your inquiry.” Mr Herron straightens his glasses. “It’s a symbol I have seen only a scant few times. Please, come into the back where we may sit.”

We weave our way between the towering shelves and through a burgundy velvet curtain. The backroom is tiny, with a two-seater sofa and two chairs. Books lay in piles on surfaces, along with folder files and a laptop on one of the chair cushions. Lamps light the room with a soft, yellow light. A coffee machine and an electric kettle are set up in one corner with what looks like a row of homemade clay mugs. 

“I’m surprised you don’t read back here by candlelight,” I say.

“Candles? In this place?” Mr Herron says with a smile. “I should be inviting disaster. I prefer to keep my collection intact. Difficult to read ashes, you know, unless one knows spodomancy.” 

I raise my eyebrows.

“Reading ashes,” Mycroft murmurs beside me.

I nod.  _ Okay then. _

“Can I offer you tea or coffee?”

“A cuppa would be lovely,” I say.

“None for me, thank you,” Mycroft says as he sits on the sofa. I sit at the opposite end, but there’s only about a foot of space between us. “If I may ask, Mr Herron, where have you seen this symbol before our inquiry?”

“Right down to brass tacks?” Mr Herron grins. “Right, then. Do you take milk in your tea, Inspector?”

“A dash’ll do.” I watch him as he prepares it, thinking of my recent experience with Dale McCarney. Perhaps I shouldn't have accepted, because a cold sweat seeps down my spine.

Mycroft touches my shoulder, and pulls away before Mr Herron turns.

“Coming right up,” Mr Herron says. “To answer your question, Mr Holmes, I recently spotted the symbol whilst on social media. The death of Victoria Rivera?”

A chill runs through me “Yes?” I say.

“Yes. Well, I must admit that I read up closely on the arrest of Jules Mathison. Such unfortunate business. My interests in today’s pop culture lies in that of  _ pharmakos. _ Are you familiar with the practice?”

“I know of it,” Mycroft says. “An ancient rite in which the sins of an entire village might be placed on one person - the unfortunate wretch was usually a homeless person without connections, or a person with a deformity. It was believed that by transferring a community of sins to that one person and then to either sacrifice them or maim them in some manner, the sins of the community were then null and void.”

“Yes.” Mr Herron hands me the mug of tea. I hold it, staring at it as I let this information sink in. “Fascinating, if ill-conceived,” Mr Herron says.

My stomach turns. I’ve seen some of the worst of what people can do to each other. This just sounds like people finding an excuse to be shitty as a mob with a clear conscience.

“Today’s version of that, I would posit, is to sacrifice the celebrity. The celebrity isn’t a real person, but an idealised version of a person. We build them up in their ascent, and when it comes to their downfall, oh the schadenfreude! With their fall, we can pat ourselves on the back for our good choices. Our godly ways. We can take heart in that we are not them.”

“What’d you call it?” I say.

“Pharmakos. A sacrifice to soothe the gods.” He stirs a bit of milk into his own mug of tea. I wait for him to sip his tea first. 

“A theme common in many cultures - death and rebirth. Persephone, Mithras, Osiris, Jesus,” Mycroft muses. “Unfortunately, humans don’t tend to come back from the dead.”

I shiver.

“Not usually, no.” Mr Herron takes a sip. My shoulders relax, just a bit. “So of course, when Jules Mathison - who is held up as a paradigm of virtue, particularly in the music world - was chopped down, and so quickly and effectively mind you, I took an interest. That does mean plenty of late-night perusal of news reports, commentary, and social media. Despicable, but then there it is. More than just today’s colosseum, it is today’s human sacrifice.”

“So you were social media stalking. Then what?” I blow over the top of the hot liquid. The pungent scent of black tea lifts into my nostrils. 

Mr Herron hums a laugh. “Fair enough. I was on Victoria Rivera’s Instagram. In a photo dated September 10th, she’s in a bedroom with a dog in her lap. Over her left shoulder is the symbol on a paper tacked to a wall. The words ‘What if every tree refused to let go of every dying leaf?’ caption the symbol. Then you sent me your inquiry.” Mr Herron looks at us over the frame of his spectacles. “Are you investigating her death?”

I’m reeling - those are the words on the sticky note given to me from Dale McCarney.

And there’s that other thing.

“Victoria Rivera doesn’t have a dog,” I say to Mycroft.

Mycroft lifts his shoulders.

I look at Herron. “What type of dog was it?”

“Oh, one of those delightful little breeds. A papillon, I believe.”

Mycroft and I exchange knowing looks.  _ Fuckin’ hell. _

“Mr Herron, thank you for that information. We are indeed investigating Ms Rivera’s death. Can you tell us more about the symbol?” Mycroft says.

“The symbol is a stylised monogram lain on its side.” He sits in a chair with a rigid, high back and brings out a sheet of paper with the symbol on it. With a pen, he traces the lines.

“H, S, and N,” he says, moving the pen along. “Hector St John Northcott. Otherwise known as John Morris Brown.”

Mycroft’s face looks perplexed. I’m sure mine does, too. “Who’s that?”

“One of England’s lesser-known cult leaders and alleged serial killer.”

Great. This just gets more fucked up all the time. “Tell me more,” I say, when I can breathe again. 

“Well, John Morris Brown was the son of a physician. His mother died in giving birth to him, unfortunately. He was an only child and the letters I could find regarding him as a youth say he was strange. Accused him of ‘unseemly activities.’

“Later, he courted a young lady, some distant cousin who was the daughter of a reverend. He joined the seminary with the intention of taking over her father’s parish when he retired. She refused him and married another. It was a great scandal at the time and he was terribly embarrassed. 

“That’s when disappearances of young women began. Never in the town where he lived, but in the surrounding towns. Not that these disappearances were ascribed to him, yet that is when it began. Folks spun tales of a slender man lurking in the woods, taking unsuspecting women and carrying them off into the night. It was quite the news for a small selection of towns. People became paranoid. 

“That’s when John Brown began sermonising. I don’t have any records of his words as a public figure, but apparently, they were persuasive enough to attract followers. He had his followers build a church on the property that belonged to his father, who had by now passed away. Strangely enough, none of his followers were stolen, and neither were their children.

“He changed his name to Hector St John Northcott. Reverend Northcott, he was known as, considered himself quite the gentleman, it seems. He had a valet, and a house full of servants - his followers. They called themselves the  _ Immortalis Mortis Imperium. _ ”

“The Order of the Deathless Death?” Mycroft asks.

“Yes,” Mr Herron replies.

“In what town was this?” I say.

“The village of Wakering. Now called Great Wakering.”

I have to stop myself from looking at Mycroft. 

“If someone spoke against him or his cult, they found themselves missing a relative or a friend, most often female, most definitely never seen again. But no one knew how or where...perhaps some of his more dedicated followers helped him. It’s uncertain.”

“How was he caught?” 

“A fisherman found his favourite killing ground,” he says as he stares into the surface of his tea. “He’d have his victim chained to a rock, and wait as the evening tide came in. The victim, a woman by the name of May Cawthorn, told them everything she’d seen. I have a copy of her account.” He places the page in front of us. “Told them how it was Northcott’s valet, Simon Westall, who apprehended her while she was walking on her way to church. Northcott himself visited her and spoke to her of her great sins, and the sins of her father - Henry Cawthorn - who spoke foolishly against him. She says Northcott’s maids prepared her for the rock by bathing her, anointing her with perfumes, and wrapping her in only a muslin sheet. The men carried her out and chained her to the rock. The fisherman was new to the area, and bumbled his way into Northcott’s cove. He heard the cries of the woman, and saved her life. Quickly rowed to find the local constabulary.”

“And he was arrested?”

Mr Herron’s jaw works. “Ah, no. His servants were, however, as were many of his followers, and they were questioned. Reverend Northcott himself was found by local villagers before the constables got to him. He was treated to a taste of his own medicine. Taken out to that rock, chained, and left to drown.”

“And he did,” I say. 

“He did,” Mr Herron confirms. “And this symbol belongs to him and his followers. It was their way of letting others know that they were one of his. He’d planned on amassing quite a bit of power, it turned out.”

“I’m surprised he doesn’t garner a larger footnote in history, particularly in this area,” Mycroft says. “The land around the church and barn is farms and woods. The population of Great Wakering has grown to about 5,000 residents. Certainly it must have lingered as a gruesome tale intended to titillate a willing audience.”

Mr Herron shrugs. “It finds a resurgence now and again, particularly among the youth, usually as a way of scaring their compatriots, but alas, it has mostly gone to the wayside.”

“And do you think there’s any chance of the cult itself resurfacing?” I say.

Mr Herron’s lips flatten, his eyes downcast. “Once upon a time, they did.”

Mycroft leans forward. “They did?”

“It was many years ago, and I know few details of it, suffice to say it was summarily quashed.” He gives us a strange smile. “Sometimes a man is even more powerful in death than he was in life.”

“Were all of his followers caught?”

“No, and since they denied knowing anything about the murders, and the servants could be convicted of those crimes, no constabulary could hold them.”

I rub at my chin. Is this latest case the result of some crazies passing down old knowledge and restarting some nutso cult? 

I’d prefer a singular killer, or perhaps a partnership. But a cult? No thank you. I think again of the Maenads, wine-drunk and ravening, tearing Orpheus to pieces. 

“Thank you, Mr Herron,” Mycroft says. “I think you’ve been enlightening.”

I take a swig of the milky tea. It’s a bit heavy on the milk, but I need something to fortify me for our next visit. After learning all of this, I’ve got one person with a direct line to some answers. The papillon in Vicki’s lap? The symbol on the bedroom wall? This Hiram West bloke at her benefit? 

That sly minx, Tansy Winters. 


	21. Transmigration of the Soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this far. Thank you so much for the kudos and the comments. I'm so happy about getting to share this story with you.

“Tansy, you are in a boatload of trouble,” I say when she opens the door. 

She pales. She doesn’t look as if she’s been sleeping well. Bags lie beneath her eyes, her fingers pinch a cigarette, and her hair is a stringy cascade around her shoulders. 

“I didn’t want to have to come back here, you know.” I stroll into her flat with Mycroft on my heels. “And not because I find you repulsive in any sort of way or anything like that. I just…” I squeeze the bridge of my nose with my forefinger and thumb. “How many times are you gonna lie to us?”

“I can’t talk. If I talk, I could...listen, they’re always watching me. Just that you’re here is going to get me in trouble.” Her voice is thin and her hands flutter through the air like a butterfly with a hole in its wings. “Oh god.”

“Who’s watching?” Mycroft asks in a calm, soothing voice. 

“I can’t say. I can’t.” She paces, wringing her hands. “Please, please leave.”

“Tell us what’s going on,” I say.

“Tell us, Ms Winters, and you have my word that we will protect you,” Mycroft says.

“We’ve been out to the barn and the church,” I say. “You know there are penalties for impeding a police investigation, yeah?”

“I don’t - I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her hands shake, and she doesn’t look at either of us.

I bring out my phone. I’ve found the photo Niles Herron was talking about. It’s definitely Tansy’s dog, Beaver. I glance around. No sign of the dog. “Where’s your dog?”

“What?” Tansy says.

“Beaver? Where is she?”

“I - I gave her to my mom.” Her voice trembles. 

“Why?”

“I - I just haven’t had time for her lately, is all -”

“Did they threaten your dog, Tansy?”

Her eyes fill with tears.

I hold up my phone with Vicki’s Instagram photo in plain view. Smiling at the camera, very much alive, holding the little papillon in her lap. Hector Northcott’s sideways monogram on the paper tacked on the wall behind her. “You spend a lot of time in the Order of the Immortal Imperium, Tansy? See that emblem? The sideways monogram? H, S, and N? Want to tell us more about Hector Northcott?”

_ “Immortalis Mortis Imperium,” _ Mycroft intones from behind me. 

Her eyes go wide. Her hands go still. The cigarette is crushed between her fingers.

“I - I…”

“I mean it, Ms Winters. I could have a full security detail on you while we arrest the people who are pressuring you to stay quiet,” Mycroft says.

“They made me sign an NDA,” she says, in a small voice.

“That will be null and void if they’re committing crimes, Tansy.” I continue holding Vicki’s picture up. “Murder is for sure a crime.”

She stares ahead, her eyes glazed over. Her fists are balled, trembling.

I let my hand drop to my waist, clutching the phone. “Please. Vicki was your friend, wasn’t she?”

Tansy’s face crumples and she hides her eyes behind her fists. She says something like “It should have been me.”

“It should have been you?” I ask, gently.

“I was supposed to bear the Vessel, but I couldn’t - I couldn’t.” She sinks to the floor as anguished sobs reach the ceiling. 

At ‘bear the Vessel’ Mycroft and I exchange looks. 

“Okay,” I say. I kneel on the rug beside her and wait for the sobs to die down. “Tell us everything, Tansy, and we’ll protect you, and we’ll put these people away.”

“Vicki wasn’t even supposed to be involved, it was just because she and Jules had a thing for each other.” Tears stream down her face. “I can’t...it turns out that I have lupus. I’m - I’m imperfect, and while adjusting to my new medications and my new lifestyle, I couldn’t...I couldn’t be what they need. I was allowed out of the Order on the promise I wouldn’t talk about it, and that I would lead Victoria into becoming the Mother. But Vicki, Vicki didn’t want to be part of it, and that’s why we fought. She told me she got pregnant and she told me she was getting an abortion. I told her she couldn’t, that it was Jules’ progeny, and therefore the perfect Vessel for...for him.”

“Him?”

She points to my phone with a shaking finger. “I don’t want to say his name. I can’t.”

“So wait, Jules got Vicki pregnant, and this baby was supposed to be the Vessel. For him?” I point to the monogram portrayed on my phone.

“Transmigration of the soul,” Mycroft whispers.

She nods her head, swiping at the tears on her face. “It’s my fault. I told them. I told them she was pregnant, and that she wanted to get rid of the baby.” She bursts into fresh tears, a keening wail erupting from her throat. I want answers, but I have the urge to shove her over onto the rug once I process what she said - she told them. She told these crazy nutters that Victoria Rivera was pregnant, and getting rid of the child. And they killed her.

I stare at Mycroft, who has kneeled close to us, his face working through a variety of expressions.

Mycroft hands Tansy a handkerchief, who stares at it for a second and then takes it. Wipes her face roughly and clutches it between her fingers.

“Tansy, what you’re saying sounds incredible,” I say. “I would almost say unbelievable.”

“I know.” She sniffs. “I’m sorry. I - I don’t know how else to explain it. I know it sounds crazy. But it’s true.”

“Who is the leader of the Order?”

She folds her hands in her lap. Swallows. “The Seer is Hiram West.”

“The Seer.”

“Yes. He...he speaks for _ him _ . The rest of us...we don’t see him unless he chooses to visit us in a dream. But the Seer can see him whenever he’s in the room.”

“Him?” I point at my phone again. “And who is this ‘him’ to you?” 

“A man who couldn’t be vanquished by the sea because he was a god in man’s form.” She says it as if it’s something she’s heard again and again.

“Not someone named Hector St John Northcott? Or John Morris Brown?”

She looks at me sharply. “I’ve heard the first name. Not the second.”

“Okay,” I say. Wonder if Hiram West knows that Hector St John Northcott was born John Morris Brown. “When you say vessel…”

“So the god can walk among us once more. He has to enter the body of someone newly born.”

My stomach curdles with disgust. My heart rate increases. “And that’s what Vicki’s baby was to be?”

“Yes.”

“But she wasn’t a member of the Order?”

“No,” she says. “I was...I was bringing her into it, but everything with Jules happened too quickly. He was...eager. And Vicki was dazzled by him. I tried to prevent it by hooking her up with Michael but...Michael let her go and she went right to Jules.” She rubbed at her eyes with the cloth again. 

Just when I think it can’t get more fucked. I need to stop thinking that. “So, Jules basically placed her into the role without her realising?”

“Yeah. And, when she told me she was pregnant…” She stares upward, her eyes glimmering. “I knew she’d be in danger if she didn’t agree to have the baby. I told her, and she called me crazy and that she was ending the pregnancy and she’d never see Jules or me again. She said we were a bunch of crazy people, that it was a sick cult, and she’d have nothing to do with it.”

I suck in my lower lip. Then ask, “And what do you think now?”

Tansy starts crying again. “It was...it wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“Who initiated you?” Mycroft asks.

“Jules. I...I thought I was in love with him.” She looks at me, red-faced and makeup-smudged. “Stupid, right? Anyway, we were friends. He was...he was so charming and so good with words. It started...maybe seven years ago? He was my friend. I was at a party I had no business being at, and I know it was a bad idea, but he invited me to other places, and I had such a crush on him, you know? I mean, we’re talking Jules Mathison of Last Heartbeat. He was such a gentleman, and he seemed so worldly.” 

I look at her. She can’t be more than mid-twenties. “You were in your teens?”

She pulls on the handkerchief with her hands, staring into it, as if reading her story there. I’m not sure she heard me. “Eliza can’t have kids, you know. And, he told me once, he didn’t want to share this part of his life with her. That he wanted to share it with me. When I was old enough and understood enough.” 

“About the Order?”

“Yeah. He sort of...coaxed me into it. He brought me to the barn once, on a picnic. We snuck around a lot. Eventually, we started having sex. I was in deep. He introduced me to his father, and I got to go to these private family gatherings, where no one seemed to mind that Jules had me on his arm instead of his wife. He made me feel special.”

“Wait, you met his dad?” I say.

“Yeah.”

“Tansy. Jules Mathison’s parents are dead. That was part of his appeal - the poor orphan who became an indie rock star.”

“I know,” she says. “His adopted parents are dead. But his biological dad found him later.”

“Oh,” Mycroft utters, and it hits me.

“Hiram West,” she says.

“The maid.” I look at Mycroft for confirmation. “The one who surrendered her kid to the now-defunct adoption agency. That kid.” 

Mycroft hums in affirmation. 

“So,” I sum up, “Hiram West is the leader of this group, and his only kid was supposed to get someone pregnant, so that baby could be the Vessel for Hector Northcott?”

“Yes,” she says, squeezing the handkerchief. “I know it sounds crazy. It all seemed so real. Especially with the dreams.”

“The dreams?” 

She lowers her head. “The - he visited me in my dreams for a little bit, before I found out about my diagnosis.”

A chill runs through me. “A dead man visited your dreams? Has anything like this ever happened to you before?”

“No.” She looks at me with wide eyes. “That’s...that’s how I came to believe them about all of it. I even went to their rituals. They do them quarterly at the full moon. The next one’s actually this week.”

I glance at Mycroft. I wonder if he shares my thoughts: it’s close to Halloween. Does that matter?

“When Jules told me I was the chosen one who would bear the vessel...I actually felt fucking honoured. Can you believe that horseshit?” Her voice has an angry edge now. “I thought Jules loved me and that I was going to be the Mother, which is an honoured position.” She laughs. Desperate. Thin. “Then came my diagnosis, and they dropped me faster than a hot potato. And on top of it, targeted my best friend, all because Jules had a crush on her!” She shakes her head. “He never loved me. He was in love with the idea of siring the Vessel.”

“And what about the Vessel?” I say, my hand forming a fist. “You were fine with the idea of giving birth to some poor kid who would get pushed aside for this fucked up freak to take over?”

She flinches. “I - I didn’t—”

“You didn’t think of the poor soul that would have to make room for some dead guy?”

“He’s - he’s not just some dead guy, right? He’s some kind of god or demon, or I don’t even really know!” she says, her voice rising in pitch.

Mycroft’s hand closes over mine. The fear ricochets all through my chest as I think of my Grandnan’s words:  _ “He’ll float away if I don’t teach him!” _

“Hector St John Northcott,” I grit out, “was born John Morris Brown. He was a serial killer who was killed by the villagers who despised him. People he had been preying upon.”

She looks stricken. “But then how did he come to visit me in my dreams?”

I set my jaw. “That’s something we’ll need to find out.” I start for the door. 

“What about my protection?” she says. 

I look over my shoulder. “We’re giving you protection, but you better be ready with more names.” I turn to leave.

“I don’t - I don’t believe in all that shit now,” she calls after me. “I’m wondering if the dreams were a result of hypnosis or suggestion. They just seemed so real.”

I whirl around. “Was it worth it?” 

She raises her eyebrows in question.

“What was the appeal - aside from the  _ honour _ of being the mother who kills her child to allow someone else to use its body?”

She bites her lip, looking shamefaced. “I was promised...immortal life.”

Mycroft meets my glance.

“He was going to share the secret with all of us,” she whispers.

The cold, metal edge of anger slices through me, and I head out the door. 


	22. Framed by Fog

Mycroft crawls into bed behind me, nestles in, enfolding me into his arms. I clasp one of his hands over my heart and close my eyes. It’d been a quiet evening. Mycroft made sure I at least ate toast for dinner and we’d gone to bed early.

“You’re still upset,” he says.

I exhale loudly. “Yes.”

“It’s understandable. This is a lot to take in.”

“A group of people willing to take part in some weird occult ritual that kills a person to let a dead bloke in,” I say, my voice edged with anger. “Kills a  _ baby. _ It’s fucked up.”

Mycroft hums. “In the promise of eternal life.”

“And willing to kill for it. She was part of that - happy to be part of that.”

“Groomed, perhaps,” Mycroft replies in a quiet voice.

I grit my teeth. I want to hold on to my anger at her. She’s something tangible - a member of the cult who is somehow in my purview, someone I can reach.

Someone I can hurt.

I rub at my brow. These are not good thoughts.

“I spoke with Mr Herron before coming to bed,” Mycroft says. “I gave him the information Ms Winters gave us. He’ll have more for us tomorrow, he thinks.”

I grunt, as a way of letting him know I heard him. I get the feeling Mr Herron hasn’t been forthright with all of his information, too.

Mycroft’s fingers stroke through my hair. Soothing. I close my eyes and let my breathing settle. Think of Grandnan, who would rub my back and kiss the crown of my head when I was unhappy. Nan, a resplendent peacock among a ragtag group of guinea hens, would always put away her posturing to lend me a gentle word or a touch of comfort.

“They’ll gather,” Mycroft says. “West and his followers. I wonder how Hiram West got involved in the first place.”

I let myself thaw under his touch. “Yeah, I do, too. And if they lost their first Mother and Vessel, don’t you think they’ll be choosing a new one? I can’t imagine Hector Northcott wants to wait much longer. Probably angry at his followers for botching this one.” Another child. “We have to stop them.”

“It’s been centuries since he last lived.”

“Amassing power. Figuring out how he could come back.” The disgust is clear in my voice. “He was close, and something must have gone wrong. Victoria was told what her role was, and she refused, and so they killed her. And the shitty thing about all of this is that we still don’t know who killed her, or who killed Jules Mathison. We have evidence of an occult group and the grief-struck ramblings of one heiress - with a terrible reputation, I might add. It might all be true, but none of this holds water in court, does it?” Tansy had provided Mycroft with a small list - she didn’t know all the other members as when they met, they wore masks. Her own mask had been requisitioned upon her leaving.

“You’re right,” Mycroft says. “It’s too far outside the bounds of normal court.”

“Normal court,” I snort. “I suppose you have a judiciary system set up for this kind of thing?”

His grip tightens. “I could,” he says.

“Under what authority?”

Mycroft squeezes me closer to him. “Frankly, Greg, I don’t care whose. Mine. That does it for me.”

“It’s a bit wrong to call moral shots on your own.”

“The problem here isn’t necessarily the moral question. Murder is a crime, is it not? And if the hand behind it all is that of a spectre, we don’t currently have the legal proceedings in place to bring it to justice, do we?”

“Right.”

“Okay. But what we do have is a medium - you - and a hand of justice - me.”

“A hand of justice?”

Mycroft traces a finger over my chest. “A precarious position, nonetheless, a necessary one. My charge is to keep England’s denizens safe. If it means I can’t put Hiram West in a prison, I must find other ways to stop his deeds. Perhaps that means stopping this Hector Northcott.”

“And if it turns out a flesh-and-blood person killed Vicki and Jules?”

“As I’m sure it is one, we must flush out the evidence.” He kisses my bare shoulder. “I have faith in us, Greg. I, especially, have faith in you.”

“Me? Why me?”

“You are so full of heart, and while you are beset by this...gift, curse, what have you, you are still so sane, so rooted in your cause.” I can feel his smile against my skin.

“I don’t feel sane.”

“With what you endure, I can understand why you might feel that way.”

“Mycroft.” I pause. Breathe in. Out.

“What is it?”

I can trust him. I can trust him. “I’ve been seeing something new. A shadow. I—I think it’s...I don’t know what it is.”

Mycroft says nothing for a moment. Then, “When have you seen it?”

“When I was lying on the floor. I saw a shadow in the room with me. It was the shadow of a man, but it moved...it moved like a nightmare.” The fear takes hold again, that thought of paralysis and I wiggle, moving my arms just to make sure I can. “I thought it was the drugs. I could see it coming while that other man was talking with McCarney.”

Mycroft tightens his hold around me.

“And I saw it again in the interrogation room with McCarney. It appeared in the corner, and then it faded. I thought it was a trick of the eye. But it was the same thing. I swear it was the same thing as what I saw in that room.”

Mycroft strokes me tenderly along my shoulder and down my arm. “I fear there may be a few things we don’t know or understand in this investigation, Greg. But one thing I know for certain is that while your mind may work differently from the status quo, you are not insane.” He presses a kiss to my shoulder. “My mind differs from that of the common man, and I am merely eccentric. You may borrow the moniker, if you like.”

I snort a laugh, despite the chill that surrounds me. “Thanks. I might.”

“Please do.” He continues stroking my arm. “And. Thank you for telling me.”

“Thank you for being here for me, Mycroft.” My throat feels clogged with old and new feelings, churning in a malaise of emotions I can just barely parse. Relief, gratitude, regret that I didn’t find someone in my life sooner who would accept me and my...eccentricities.

His hand stops stroking. Squeezes my arm. A smile escapes me. This is what I have now. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Not even immortality.

“In my head,” Mycroft says, “I’ve begun calling you an old-fashioned pet name.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?” I turn slightly to face him.

“ _ Hertis rote. _ ” I can feel his smirk against my shoulder blade as he presses his face to my back. Then he lifts his head. “Not a beautiful name, perhaps, but I think of it. It means ‘heart’s root.’”

I can’t help the wash of warm, golden feeling that permeates my chest and lifts the corners of my lips. It pushes away the murky miasma I was wallowing in. “Yeah? I like it.”

“Good.” He kisses the nape of my neck. “Now rest. We’ll continue the good fight in the morning.”

I press my arse up against his groin. “You’re not interested in…?”

“With you? Of course. But I think rest would be wise after the day we’ve had, don’t you?”

“So long as you hold me.”

“You can count on it,” he whispers.

I smile and close my eyes.

* * *

She waits at the edge of the meadow, framed by fog. Or perhaps it’s smoke? No, it’s sluggish and cold. Like fog.

Victoria looks at me. Her face is slack. The sky - is it a sky? Or are we beneath a dome, like a large stadium? - is overcast.

“Are we on the right track?” I ask.

Victoria turns to look into the fog. She points.

“I can’t see. What’s there?”

A sigh leaves her lips like a wind picking up in the trees, soft and whistling. Her mouth opens, closes, like she’s shaping words. Tears brim in the wells of her eyes. I can’t tell what she’s trying to say, but whatever it is, she’s lipping furiously, getting more panicked by the minute.

Her lips stop moving. Her face is full of sorrow.

“Is this the afterlife?” I ask, helplessly. I move my hands up, as if to touch her. I reach out. She’s distracted. No longer looking at me, but behind me.

I follow her gaze, turning to see.

A monstrous river rolls towards us, torpid as ooze and black as char. It smokes and steams as it curls over the meadow, progressing like a frightening, ebony-tentacled beast. Putrid stench saturates the air, burning and foul.

I look to the one tree in the meadow. It stands between us and the hot, soupy blackness. My tree, as I think of it. Its grey-green leaves flutter from the heat. Black birds flee from its branches and climb the sky with the frantic flapping of their wings.

Vicki appears beside me and grabs hold of my arm. She mouths the words again. The heat sears my skin as the pitch-black water nears, a low roar rumbling in my ears. Salt and sulphur fill the air and crows fly overhead, cawing, cawing, cawing. The taste of salt is in my mouth, and my ears feel as if they’re blocked. Underwater. Drowning.

_ I’m sorry _ , she mouths, as the tainted river reaches the tree, and it begins to die.


	23. A River Full of Char

“Greg!” The voice rolls across the field like a sharp peal of thunder. “Greg!”

Mycroft materializes before me. I gasp awake. “Oh!” My face is wet and hot. 

“Greg, you were dreaming.” He’s holding me close, one hand wiping the tears away on my cheeks. His face fills my vision, a veritable angel in the darkness. I can see the silhouette of his nose and the lines that define his eyes. 

“Oh god.” My heart pounds. I clutch one hand over my chest.

Mycroft hugs me. “I’ll get you some water.”

“No! Stay. Stay, please.”

Mycroft strokes my hair, kisses my temple. “If you wish.”

I think of the dream. Vicki’s sense of resignation. Sorrow. It fills me, like the well of a pen touched to the pool of ink. 

The dying tree awash in a black river of heat and death.

A shudder wracks my bones. It all means something, and I’m too dull or too blind to see it.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Mycroft murmurs into my hair.

“I…” I shake my head. “It was Vicki. She was trying to tell me something. She said she’s sorry.”

“Do they talk to you?”

“No. Not usually. She’s...unlike anyone I’ve ever come across. She’s so insistent on everything. So forceful. And this time, she mouthed the words at me. And my tree-“

“Your tree?”

“We’ve been meeting in a field. I call it a field, but it’s like a flat plain of ashes. Like everything has been burned.”

“Asphodel Meadow,” Mycroft says.

“Yeah. Maybe. Except there’s this tree. And it’s the only thing. At the edges of the field is mist, and the tree and Vicki are the only things.”

“What happened this time?”

“This river of darkness...like it was a burning river, full of char. Maybe it was picking up the ashes of the fields and it turned black and it smoked and it was like some terrible monster. It was headed for us but it got the tree. Vicki was crying and she told me she was sorry.”

Mycroft’s body shivers against mine. “Well, I don’t much care for the symbolism there. A river of death kills the one living thing in the meadow?”

I draw a breath. “No. It killed one of the living things in the meadow.” I’ve gotta buck up; otherwise, it will all be for nothing if I lose my nerve now. “I’m still alive.”

* * *

Mycroft sits next to me as I spread out the paper. After drawing a deep breath, I pick up a graphite pencil and put it to the page.

“You’re certain about this?” he asks.

“She’s been trying to communicate all this time. Pushing at me. Visiting me in my dreams. This time, she was trying to warn me about something. I should let her speak.”

Mycroft nods. 

I take another breath. I’ve never purposely sat like this with someone else watching since I was a child and my Grandnan watched. A little voice in the back of my mind is trying to tell me that it will scare Mycroft off. 

But we’ve already been through so much, and he’s still here.

I think of Victoria. Begin to draw an eye— 

I blink. My hand is poised over the page, pencil still clasped in my fingers. A sketch stares back at me. 

Mycroft is beside me. “Greg?” he whispers.

I drop the pencil and swallow. “It’s me.”

The sketch depicts a boulder in shallow water. Algae or seaweed clings to its sides, swept into the tide. 

“Are those chains?” he asks. Hanging from the rock itself are two lines of links, glinting with light from the sun. “Is it...the site where Hector Northcott left his victims to die?”

Chills prickle down my back. I find it hard to speak, so I don’t. 

“You thought she was trying to warn you? About this?” 

“I don’t know.” I’m sweating, and my mouth is dry. “I don’t know.”

Mycroft slides his arms around me and pulls me close. 

* * *

Mycroft stirs milk into his tea. “Hiram West, if I were to hazard a guess, would not respond to a simple inquiry or confrontation. He’s far too smart for that. I think he’d ask what evidence we have, and the answer is none. Tansy Winters is easy enough to discredit.”

“Yeah. And I’m sure they’d circle the wagons in no time, and we’d be at a dead end.” I rub a hand over my freshly shaved face. We didn’t go back to bed after the drawing session. Instead, we showered and pretended to eat breakfast. “I wish there’d been more to the arson report where Victoria Rivera died. Something that would help us. And with Jules Mathison looking like a suicide…”

Beside me on the sofa is Duncan, who’s been reading through Tansy’s statement. Mycroft wrote it all down and printed it out earlier this morning. Omar sits in the armchair, reading the same.

“Yes.” Mycroft’s phone rings before he can say anything else. “It’s an unknown number,” he says. He glances at me before answering. “Hello?”

I wait as someone speaks to him. Duncan and Omar have paused in their reading, their eyes on Mycroft.

“Mr Herron. Are you alright?” Mycroft’s eyes widen as his chin lifts. His face skews into an expression of concern. He lowers his phone and hits the speaker button. 

“ _-anyway the bookshop might be burnt up but I have video footage - it all gets saved in the Cloud—“_

“Thanks be to the Cloud,” Mycroft murmurs.

“I’m sorry, did you say your bookshop burnt up?” I ask.

_“I did and it did. Inspector, is that you?”_

“Yes. Have you called the police?” 

_“All done. Already done. Obviously, your visit gained attention.”_ My stomach drops.

“Our sincerest apologies,” Mycroft says. 

“ _Yes, yes, yes, but that’s not what’s important. All the good stuff isn’t in the shop, and I have insurance. I have footage of the intruders - they wore the corvid masks.”_

I’m sure shock must show on my face. Mycroft’s lips twist. I ask, “They were the same as the mask we showed you?”

_”Yes. These masks must be what Northcott’s followers wore for ceremonies - like while taking a victim out to the rock for sacrifice.”_

A shiver runs rampant through me as I recall the rock I sketched, chains dragged by the tide.

_“His servant confessed to it. They claimed others wore them, too, but they wouldn’t identify other members in their church. All of the servants were hanged. The masks were never found, but they described them. Like ravens or crows. Birds of death.”_

“A murder,” I muse.

“ _Quite. Anyway, Hector Northcott was an occultist, and studied whatever he could get his hands on. Old rare books and manuscripts. I have reason to believe he’s still around.”_

A cold sliver of fear settles in my stomach. A spirit able to inspire a new following?

_“I’m sure you’re learned men who don’t believe in ghosts and the like, but I tell you I have seen some strange things in my time—”_

“I believe you,” I say.

“ _Oh.”_ A pause. _“You do?”_

“Yes,” I say. I look at Mycroft.

“We do,” he says. “Hector Northcott, if we’ve theorised correctly, has been gathering followers. He’s trying to uncover a Vessel - a child whose body he may inhabit, as I mentioned yesterday.”

 _“You mean you believe the story Tansy Winters told you, and what I’ve told you?”_ His incredulity bleeds through his posh voice. 

“We do. I think he’s set himself up as some kind of god,” I say, remembering Tansy’s words. “And he was going to use Victoria Rivera’s child as a Vessel. For himself. Is that even possible? Can a spirit do that?” I’m aware of Duncan’s and Omar’s eyes on me. They’ve read Tansy’s statement. I’m not sure they believe any of this occult crap, but they know what we discussed with Mr Herron at the last visit, too. 

“ _Er, well, it’s often called ‘replacement reincarnation.’ In this case, more specifically ‘postnatal replacement reincarnation,’ whereupon one spirit controlling a new body is replaced by another.”_

A whirl of emotions blizzard through me. I lean my forehead into my palm.

“Apparently, his followers are being promised the secret to immortality,” Mycroft adds.

_“Well, I suppose if they successfully follow his example of replacement reincarnation, then it becomes a possibility.”_

All those lives. All those children. Babies. Pushed out. Floating away.

Not even there.

I lick my lips and say, “This...isn’t the news I wanted to hear.” I rub my stomach as veins of a creeping frost gather there. “Seems they are going to meet tomorrow during the full moon. Right close to Halloween, of course.”

 _“Ah, the esbat. Blood Moon. Pretty hokey, but it does have some truth to it in terms of power.”_ After a pause, Herron asks, _“If I may be privy, which one of you is the medium?”_

The room is quiet. “Sorry?” I say, though it comes out as a soft squeak.

“ _Which one of you talks to the dead? Engages with mediumship?”_ His tone is sharp. Insistent.

“Ah,” I falter. Look to Mycroft. He looks surprised, but he reaches out and grabs my hand. “That would be me, I guess.” I don’t look at the other two men. Flames rise in my cheeks and the ice chill in my belly cracks and splinters, melts with the heat of my discomfort.

“ _And what have you seen?”_

“Um, I have dreams. Vicki - Victoria visits me, and she’s distraught. She’s the one who first showed me the mask and the symbol.” It feels so weird to be saying aloud. To a stranger. In front of people I like and respect.

What do Omar and Duncan believe? What can they be thinking at this moment? 

“ _What else?”_

I squeeze Mycroft’s hand, and mouth the words. I can’t quite make myself say “I draw” above the register of a low mumble. I don’t want to think of those little slips in my life where someone else moves my limbs.

“He draws,” Mycroft says. “The spirits enter his body and make him draw. He doesn’t even remember it afterwards.”

I stare at the floor. I can feel the weight of everyone’s eyes on me, as heavy as the bricks that crumbled around Vicki’s body when the building burned. 

“ _Really? Inspector, we must talk more at a later time. For now, please have my condolences.”_

I clear my throat. “Condolences?”

“ _For what we’re going to have to do.”_

“You mean we can fight him?” I ask. Something like hope flickers beneath my ribs, trying to catch alight.

_“We can. The best way to put Hector Northcott back to rest is to bind him to the place where he died.”_

“How do we do that?” I ask.

“Wait. How do you know this?” Mycroft asks.

_“I’ve done my research. I’ve seen the site.”_

“Then you know about the barn and the church?” 

_“Yes. And I’ve seen the rock. With the chains.”_

A silence shrouds the room. 

“What is your part in all this, Mr Herron?” A thin blade of accusation cuts through Mycroft’s words. “The inspector has shared his secret, and I get the sense that you’ve your own.”

Herron is silent. For a beat. _“My great-great-grandmother was May Cawthorn.”_

“The one who survived?” I’m gobsmacked. “The one rescued by the fisherman?”

_“The very same. She went on to marry Thomas Herron. Their son, Daniel Herron, committed suicide, leaving behind a wife and three children. The wife sent the three children to her brother in India. One died there of an illness. The other lived to a ripe old age. My grandfather, however, named Oliver Herron, returned to England with his wife Omala, along with their two children. Not long after arriving, he committed suicide. My grandmother, Omala, remained in London, but my aunt returned to India. My father, Theodore Herron, remained with my grandmother. He killed himself eleven years ago. I can tell you with confidence that he was not suicidal.”_

Mycroft sums it up slowly. “You’re saying every man in your family who has lived in England has committed suicide.”

“ _I hazard to guess that any woman who stayed in England would have done the same.”_

I chew on the inside of my cheek and rub my fingers together.

_“We do not have a history of mental illness in the family. The suicides have all been shocking. No note. No signs of depression. My father ran a thriving business and loved my mother very much. I wasn’t yet finished with school, and he ensured I worked hard, but he also showed me kindness and comfort.”_

“Are you suggesting, Mr Herron, that the spirit of Hector Northcott has been compelling your relatives to commit suicide, so long as they remain in his geographical purview?”

_“May Cawthorn is the one that got away. I have reason to believe this is Hector Northcott’s way of exacting revenge.”_

Something clicks into place. “Jules Mathison,” I mutter. Mycroft looks at me with concern, and then nods his head.

“ _It seems the only way to escape this fate is to move far away. I have cousins living quite happily in India, and more in America. So you can probably see that I am quite motivated to banish this particular spirit from the earth, rather than uproot my life, or risk the lives of future generations should they ever live within his sphere of influence.”_

“I can imagine,” Mycroft murmurs.

I draw in a breath and roll back my shoulders. “So, how do we beat him?”

_“We need to trap the spirit and bring him to the rock where he died. You’ll need an object to carry him in - anything that you can carry and is meaningful to you or to one of his victims. Something you can touch to him.”_

“Touch _to_ him?”

_“Yes.”_

“I don’t - I don’t _see_ spirits. Not while I’m awake.”

_“A spirit this strong can make himself seen to mediums, if he wants to be seen. During a ceremony such as this one that’s coming up? I’d say he’ll be visible to those who are sensitive enough to see him.”_

“You have a lot of faith in this.”

_“I do.”_

“How do you know it’ll work?”

_“This isn’t my first rodeo with an upstart spirit.”_

Mycroft and I exchange bewildered glances. 

_“Now, once you’ve touched the object to the spirit, say the following words: ‘Adiuro vos, adiuro vos, adiuros vos, spiritus.’ Say those words three times. And then say,_ ‘ _et tu non nocere.’”_

“I have to say this while holding the object?”

_“Anyone touching the object can say the words and have it done.”_

“ _‘_ Adiuro vos, adiuro vos, adiuros vos, spiritus. _’_ Three times. ‘Et tu non nocere,’” Mycroft repeats. He gestures to Omar, who is scribbling on the back of a page.

_“And you have to believe it. It’s like Peter Pan and fairies.”_

“Of course it is,” Mycroft says with a droll tone. “I was only clapping this morning until the inspector made me stop on account of a noise ordinance.”

I resist the urge to swat him, though the humour does lift my spirits. A bit. “What he means is thanks for the help, Mr Herron. What happens after we trap him in the object?”

_“When you bring the vessel to the rock, I will have drawn a sigil on it. Now—”_

“I’m sorry, _you_ will have drawn a sigil on the rock? You will?”

 _“I will not be excluded,”_ he says. _“This has been my life’s work. He killed my father. We have a chance to vanquish him forever. I will see it done.”_

I look to Mycroft. His eyes search mine. He shrugs. I return it. “Alright then, Mr Herron,” Mycroft says. 

_“Please, call me Niles. The last step is to place the object over the sigil, and wait for the saltwater to come in and drown it.”_

“Drown an inanimate object?” I ask.

“ _The spirit trapped inside. They don’t usually do well with second deaths.”_

“When you say this isn’t your first rodeo...?” Mycroft leans closer to his phone.

_“I have attended exorcisms and been the target of a vengeful spirit. Aside from Mr Northcott.”_

“A vengeful spirit, you say?”

“ _A story for another time. With the full moon tomorrow, we must remain focused on our target. We must strike during the ceremony. I can meet you earlier at the beach at the edge of the property. Say, two pm?”_

“Thank you for your help, Mr Herron,” Mycroft says. “We shall see you tomorrow.”

“ _Tomorrow. Godspeed, gentlemen.”_

“Yeah,” I say. I sag in my chair as Mycroft presses the button to end the call. “Whaddya think?”

“I think he believes what he’s saying,” Mycroft says, “but it doesn’t give us the murderer.”

“No. It doesn’t. And that’s our objective.”

“Indeed. It was our first one.”

“Yeah, but I am beginning to think the reason why Vicki is so insistent is because the threat is bigger than just her. That to bring Hector Northcott back is bad news for England.”

Mycroft snorts. “Oh yes, a god-cult in which they enact the resurrection of a serial killer? I can see how that would be a cause for concern. Not to mention a group of worshippers thinking they’ll become immortal themselves.” He places his phone down on the table. “I have arranged for two teams to be present at the property tomorrow. Their task will be to arrest and detain anyone who is part of the ritual that is leaving either building. We’re going inside. The details of the operation won’t be shared with them until the last minute, to prevent possibilities of forewarning.”

“You don’t trust your own teams?” 

“Anthea is currently vetting and prepping them. I trust her. A small team will perform reconnaissance tonight, possibly place bugs.”

I glance over at Duncan and Omar. Their eyes are on Mycroft, and they’re nodding. They don’t seem particularly disturbed or curious.

“I think we should observe some part of the Order’s proceedings, don’t you?” Mycroft says. “Especially if we are to get close to Hector Northcott’s ghost.”

“The Deathless One,” I say. “McCarney called him The Deathless One when Anthea interviewed him. He thought The Deathless One would come for him in his cell, just like he did to Jules Mathison.”

Mycroft taps his fingers together in a steeple. “It does seem suicide is his weapon of choice.”

“Do you think he possesses them?” I ask.

“How else?” Mycroft says.

A chill finger-walks its way up my spine. All those times I let spirits slide inside to draw...could they have done that to me?

Mycroft grabs my arm. “No. Don’t think that. They were victims of terrible crimes, and they needed your help.”

“Right,” I say, though the fear has yet to completely abate. “Right.”

Duncan glances at me. I look away.

Mycroft’s eyes are on us. I direct a weak smile his way, a plea on my face, and he seems to understand. He steps away and into the little kitchenette, presumably putting the canister of tea away and washing the pot because it needs doing.

Jesus, he’s good at reading faces. 

I turn to Duncan and Omar. 

“So, um…” I shift in my seat, trying to breathe through waves of anxiety.

Omar’s eyes shift to mine. “We’ve come across many strange things, Inspector.”

Duncan smiles at me. “I always thought maybe you weren’t right in the head. Putting up with the little Holmes brother and all.” He winks.

My chest suddenly warms as a smile blooms on my face. “Wanker,” I say. “Not you, Omar, you’re a goddamn gentleman and an upstanding Samaritan next to this brute.” I’m still shaken with nerves, but Christ, these blokes are just what I need right now. 

“He does make me look good,” Omar says.

“I aim to please,” Duncan says.

“And Anthea?” I ask.

“Already convinced you’re not right in the head,” Duncan says. 

“Besides, she would have been listening in on that conversation,” Omar adds.

I groan. 

“She is the consummate professional,” Mycroft says as he comes back and sits down on one of the wooden chairs. “And she’s the one who knows Niles Herron. Your talent, Greg, is not unfamiliar to her.”

“Is this...is this like a conspiracy where the British Government knows about ghosts? Are aliens real, too?”

“Top secret, I’m afraid,” Mycroft says, with a teasing smile. “But now, shall we discuss the case?”

I grit my teeth as I think of Niles. Of seeing and touching an object to Hector Northcott. Killing Hector Northcott a second time. 

And then… “I keep thinking, how does Vicki know about the mask? Did Jules show it to her on a lark? Did Tansy show her? Did the murderer wear it?”

“Tansy was required to turn hers in.” Mycroft touches his fingertips together. “Do you think Victoria might have been...sacrificed? Like the victims on the rock?” Omar moves in his seat while Duncan is very still in his.

I shudder, thinking of a line of people wearing these eldritch masks, carrying some poor soul to their death at the rock. Andromeda at the rocks awaiting the Kraken. Except here, the Kraken was a madman living on land. 

It’s a big mess and I’m not sure how to untangle it. “And what the hell do we use as the object?”

“Something meaningful.” Mycroft rubs his chin. “I suppose that’s up to you, Greg.”

I rub my eyes. Hard. 

Mycroft’s watch beeps. “Anthea calls. I must answer.” 

* * *

We’ve gone over the plan a million times. I could kill for a cigarette, but as it is, I’m not even supposed to go outside this little flat. Mycroft’s gone into the loo. Omar has gone down to the flat he and Duncan are sharing. Duncan’s sitting beside me, and I wonder if the flexing of his fingers means he’s jonesing for a fag, too. 

I’d love it if I could talk to Grandnan right now. Her face hangs before me in my memory, followed by the thought of my mother’s photo still in a box in a closet in my flat. Sometimes, I feel I might be disloyal for thinking of Grandnan instead of my mum. But it can’t be helped - Grandnan is what I knew.

Duncan leans forward on his knees. He brings out a lighter and snaps it open.

“You too, eh?” I say.

“Heh.” He brushes a strand of hair behind his ear. “Mr Holmes is trying to quit. Otherwise, I’d light up right now. Not worth it to be the target of his wrath.”

“I’ve been working on quitting, too. But this case…”

“Is it like that with all of them?” He’s trying to say it casually, but I can hear the note of curiosity in his voice. Curiosity, and something more. Pity, maybe.

I’m probably reading too far into it. “No. Most cases are...run of the mill, I guess. And I usually get a bit of rest between visitations.” It makes my tongue feel heavy, like I’ve been numbed at the dentist’s office, to talk about this aloud with someone. Someone who I consider an acquaintance, who could maybe be a friend. I’ve only talked about it with Tristan, Cass, and Mycroft. Seems like my circle of trust is widening. “It’s really bizarre that Vicki came to me only a night after I had a case solve. And she’s...stronger. She’s determined. I’ve never met a spirit like her.”

He’s not looking at me. He’s staring down at his lighter. It’s brass-coloured and etched with a griffon on the front.

“Sorry. I know this sounds really strange—”

“Like I said, Inspector, it wouldn’t be the first strange thing we’ve heard in this line of work.”

“You can call me Greg.”

Duncan looks at me. “Thanks.” He leans back against the awful jean-blue of the sofa. “You know, my mammy said she saw things. I mean, half the mammies on the street said things like that. Spooked us kids, you know.” His Irish accent is stronger. “Probably meant to keep us on the up and up. But sometimes, I think I believed her.”

I think of all those psychics I’ve visited. I have no doubt it’s likely a spectrum - some people have it stronger than others. But the psychics were charlatans. Maybe I needed to go to project housing in Ireland. 

“Listen,” Duncan says, “Omar and I are devoted to Mr Holmes and to Anthea. He’s been nothing but good and fair with all of us, and with our families. We’d lay down our lives for him, not only because that’s our job, but also because he’s worthy. Know what I mean?”

I do know. I nod.

“He’s been alone for a long time. I’m pleased to see him with you,” Duncan says. Then he turns those shining brown eyes on me, his lip tugging a bit at the corner. “But so help me god, you hurt him and I’ll hurt you.”

I snort, and he laughs a great big belly laugh. 

“That’s fair,” I say. I look around. Mycroft’s still in the bathroom and the water is running. “I like him a lot, for what it’s worth. I don’t get involved with anyone just for kicks. It’s real, what I’m feeling.”

Duncan smiles as he looks back at his lighter. Flicks it on and off. “I’m glad t’hear it, mate. I think you make him happy.”

“It’s only been a few days,” I say. 

“Mr Holmes doesn’t date,” he says in a quiet voice. “So, few days, few weeks, few months. He doesn’t take it lightly.”

I duck my head and smile. “Thanks. I - it’s unexpected. But very much welcome.”

“Good.”

Mycroft emerges from the bathroom. He’s dressed in his three-piece suit without the jacket, and I think he’s just glorious. I rarely draw the living, and I’ve already sketched him once, but I wonder if he’d ever pose for me and let me draw the line of his mouth and the shadows behind his ears.

“Have I missed something?” Mycroft says. His eyes flick between us.

“Nothing. But I have been thinking.” It’s been staring at me from Vicki’s photos anytime I look. “I know what object we should use to trap this ghost.” I stand from the sofa. “Get Anthea on the line.”


	24. Pandora's Box

I grip the evidence bag in my coat pocket for what must be the fiftieth time. Anthea retrieved it - through some means that I don’t want to know about - from the evidence locker. Inside the bag is the gold necklace with a pendant in the shape of a V. Vicki’s necklace. It had sat around her neck, resting upon her collarbone, while she’d burned in that abandoned warehouse. It’s tarnished, the chain blackened by the flames, the pendant mottled with dark spots. The bits of gold that show are dull. But I know how polished it was, once upon a time, from her Instagram photos. When I was deciding what to use to carry the spirit of Hector Northcott, it came to me. It felt right. Niles had said to choose either a physical object that meant something to me, or to one of the victims. This necklace meant a lot to Vicki. And Vicki means a lot to me. 

Yet I can’t help a little, niggling sensation that Niles Herron will take one look at it and sneer. Raise an eyebrow with his super posh face and remark snidely on the paltriness of the object, of its burns, its less-than-perfect appearance. I’d have to defend it to him. It’s hers, and she’s connected to me. It feels right to use Vicki’s own emblem as the object, the Vessel, for Hector Northcott’s ghost. 

During all my useless fretting, a silence settles over the car like a woolen blanket that itches. Too quiet, despite the hum of the engine and the click of the keys beneath Mycroft’s fingers. Too still, despite his quick movements over the keyboard, and the blur of the landscape framed by the windows. The urge to hold his hand itches beneath my skin, but I gaze out the window instead. Let my mind sink into the greys and browns of the countryside palette in autumn. 

Tonight’s ceremony can’t come soon enough.

When we arrive at the coast, we exit the car with caution. We’re on the border of what should be the beach accessible to the Northcott property, with the church and barn laying beyond the line of trees. Christmas has already gone ahead, Anthea delighted with another opportunity to let the drone explore. It’s reported a single car and two people inside the church already, but no one near the beach.

That doesn’t make me feel safe, though.

Another vehicle sits up ahead, a tiny silver honda with a duct-taped rear bumper. 

“That’ll be Niles,” Mycroft says. 

Niles emerges from the vehicle in a slim black coat that meets his knees. He approaches, black wellies on his feet.

“Good to see you, Niles,” I say. I look him over, wondering if he’s carrying any weapons. One of his hands is bandaged. “Were you burnt?”

“Yes,” he says. “But I’m fine.” He doesn’t shake our hands. He looks out onto the water. His shell of calm and cool seems riddled with cracks - not at all the self-possessed shopkeeper we met the other day. Instead, he’s stiff, brittle, shoving his hands into his pockets. His gaze skitters across the waves. 

Mycroft introduces him to the rest of the team and we look out over the beach. It’s an overcast day. Birds call as they dive about. The water rolls onto the shore in a lazy tumble. A large boulder juts from the sand near shore like a large mole on skin. It seems anti-climactic for all the gravity of the moment. Just another pebble-spotted beach under another gloomy sky.

“That’s gotta be it, right?” I ask, gesturing to the boulder.

“It is,” says Niles.

“Poor blighters,” Duncan mutters. 

“Yeah.” I bite my lip.

“Shall we check it out?” Omar asks.

Mycroft looks down at his own wellies. “Greg, Niles, and I will go.” It was amusing to watch him dress into wellies that morning, especially since they are an exact match on the kelly green of his tie. “You two stay here by the car. Look out for anyone.”

We walk out, the sand sucking at our boots. The scent of the sea air is usually refreshing, but today it smells like death and decay. I look back toward the shore. Anthea is controlling Christmas somewhere, and Christmas is patrolling Northcott’s property. I scan the tree line, watching for figures. Or shadows. 

“Greg?” Mycroft says.

I startle. 

“Do you see anyone?”

“Nah. I just...have a feeling about all this. Can’t seem to shake it.” I fall back into step beside Mycroft. Niles is beelining for the boulder, and we hurry to catch up.

It’s big, taller than either of us. We’re out quite a ways from the shore, but the tide is out. The boulder is granite, a haphazard mix of grey and pink and black stone, with the sun-tipped glint of mica. Algae grows around the bottom, along with feathery fronds of green gutweed. 

Just like my sketch.

We walk to the other side, and that’s when we see them. They’re buried in the sand, but the links that pass through the bored hole in the rock are rust-red. The chains are pulled taut by the weight of the sand, where years of waves have buried the ends. 

I freeze. Mycroft grabs my elbow. 

Niles glances at us with a questioning look.

“I drew this,” I say in a gasp. “I mean, she drew this, through me.” 

He nods as if in understanding.

Mycroft steps closer, gently pulling me along.

Niles stands before a flat plane of the boulder and takes out a thick, white paint sharpie. He draws a circle and begins adding unfamiliar symbols in different quadrants. He goes over it, again and again. Mycroft and I exchange glances. 

“Sharpie? I hope this works,” I say. 

“It has to work,” Niles growls. “Chalk will wash away.” He stands. Glares at the two of us, his mouth drawn in a tight frown. He caps the marker and tucks it inside his coat. “I believe they’ll begin in the church. Then, they’ll walk through this tunnel you spoke of, and pick up their robes. They likely perform the rituals requiring a circle in the barn. Are your people in position?” 

“They’re preparing now,” Mycroft says. It’s early yet, but Mycroft’s people are set to move into the brush surrounding the Northcott land once the sun sets.

Niles gives a sharp nod, and trods off toward shore.

I watch him go. “He’s a strange bloke. I’m not sure I entirely trust him.”

“Mm. I understand why you’d feel that way. He’s known more than he’s let on since the beginning. But I’d say his honesty is showing, now. He’s shaken. He has a personal stake in this.”

“You trust him?”

“I think we have to. With caution.”

I look at Mycroft while he watches Niles walk to the shore. Really look at him. His steady gaze, the downturn of his thin lips, that aristocratic nose and those eyes like spots of an oncoming storm. 

We’re in the calm before the storm, though I’m anything but calm. Part of me would like to dive right into the sea, just go out as far as I can, if it didn’t lead to my immediate death. Another part would like to tell Mycroft, “Sod it, let’s just get in the car and move somewhere far away.” And another part of me remembers McCarney, slouching on his chair inside the interrogation room. Throwing disdainful, disbelieving looks at Anthea, before saying “He lives there,” or “That’s his home.” Whatever his exact words were, he implied that Hector lived there, like he was squatting in the dark, a toothy, dangerous troll just waiting to bash the brains of anyone who dared enter his realm. Or a slippery shadow-being that rippled across the darkness like a black river.

Why do we wait for the ceremony? We could get down in that tunnel, look for him ourselves. But, I remind myself, he didn’t come out when Mycroft and I were already down there. I don’t think he did, anyway. And I need to be able to see him manifest, according to Niles, so I can touch the object - Vicki's necklace - to him, and trap him within it. _Adiuro vos,_ and all that.

So we wait.

Mycroft stands in the sand, in those wellies while wearing a ridiculously handsome three-piece suit and an overcoat. The moment strikes me as bizarre, something out of place, out of time. I’d never have thought I’d be out here like this with Mycroft Holmes of all people. I’ve only known him to sit in dimly lit cars, lurk in little-used warehouses, or multi-task in a posh office. Brolly in hand, maybe a teacup, perhaps a fancy pen. Easy banter passing between us. But here he is with me, about to embark on something potentially dangerous, and entirely supernatural. 

“Thank you,” I say.

He looks at me in surprise, the line of his mouth relaxing. “For?”

“For being here. With me. For knowing my secret and not running away. For helping me get through the strangest case of my life. For...accepting me.” I’ve run out of words, but I need him to know. My life has been strange, has meandered in a wobbly line of uncertainties whilst I shouldered the burden of the dead. Whilst I kept others at arm’s length. Whilst I avoided writing implements and paper. I don’t think I realised just how lonely I was. 

And it’s all changed. I’ve got Mycroft, and his team of operatives who are becoming more than just colleagues on a task force. We just need to get through this. Hope no one gets shot by one of the living or compelled to kill themselves by the dead. We just need to get through this night, and after...

Mycroft looks down at his feet as a smile plays on his lips. He looks up again, his eyes squinting in the bright light. “It is my honour and my pleasure, Greg.”

He glances in the direction of the car before stepping closer to me. We’re obscured by the giant piece of rock. He pulls me into his arms. “Thank you for doing much the same for me,” he says, and closes his lips over mine.

We melt into each other for a moment, kisses descending, arms grasping, the soft rush of the ocean in our ears. I’ve never felt so fulfilled. Significant. There, on the wet sand beneath a bright but cloudy sky. 

“Let’s do this,” I say against his lips as we pause in our kisses, our brows pressed together. “We can do this.”

“Yes, we can,” he says. We release our hands, step back into the sight of the others, and head for the shore.

* * *

I sit next to Niles as I check my weapon. Anthea fits him for a wire. The sun has descended. We’re inside a van parked a few roads over from the church, but I can see the twilight through the open van door. Mycroft is outside with Duncan and Omar.

I keep looking sideways at Niles. He’s been fitted for a wire, but isn’t being given a weapon. He agreed after admitting he didn’t even know how to fire a gun.

“Do you have something you’d like to ask me, Inspector?” Niles asks when Anthea moves away.

“Are you a medium?” What I’d really like to ask is if we can trust him, and why did he stay so long in London if he thought a spirit might compel him to suicide? While he might have suspected it, he didn’t even know for certain Hector Northcott was active and amassing followers, did he?

Or, maybe he did? 

But another part of me, I know, wants him to be a medium. Wants to know that there is someone out there who is like me.

Niles doesn’t exactly look at me. He’s tapping one knee with his fingers. “Not precisely a medium. Not like you. I would say I’m ‘sensitive.’”

“Sensitive?” I try to keep my disappointment off my face. It’s fine. It’s really fine.

“Yes. I can sense things. I’ve sometimes seen things in reflective surfaces. I sometimes dream. But communicating directly such as you do? It’s not something that comes to me quite as naturally. I imagine you inherited it?” He looks at me.

“My nan,” I say. “She was a spiritualist.”

“Ah. A real one, then.” He’s referencing, of course, the many frauds who duped the public with faked seances and the like. 

“Yeah. And better than me. She could call them to her and speak with them. Even remember what she said if they...occupied her. I have trouble remembering.”

“Well, as I’m sure she explained to you, people have different levels of sensitivity. Different thresholds for occupation.”

“Different thresholds for occupation?”

“Perhaps she termed it differently. Every sensitive person is more open to occupation by a spirit than a person who isn’t sensitive. It’s why we must build up thresholds, strengthen barriers, and maintain control. It sounds as if your nan was a very sensitive medium, who also excelled in control.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“You were lucky to have her.”

A lump forms in my throat. “Yeah. I was.”

Duncan’s head pops through the door. “He’s just asked me for a cigarette.”

I boggle at him. “Mycroft?”

“Yeah.”

“You give him one?”

“Of course.” He says it with a shrug, but I can tell by his eyes that he’s concerned. 

“I’m comin’ out.”

Duncan moves and I hop out the back of the van, hitting the pavement with both feet and a loud thud. I see the glowing orange end of a cigarette several feet away. Mycroft stands with his back to us, his arm hanging loose by his side, the cigarette dangling.

I walk up next to him. “Can I have a puff?”

Wordlessly, he hands it to me. I take a drag, letting the relief of nicotine wash over me. “God, I needed that.”

“Mm.” 

“Did they place the bugs?” 

“They did.”

“Okay,” I say. “I hope they might confess to something in the church meeting.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

I hand the fag back to him. Something lingers between us, though. Mycroft’s lip curls in a way that suggests something rests on the tip of his tongue. The reason he’s out here breaking his winning streak against smoking. “What is it?”

He sags. Rubs the cigarette out on the bottom of his boot. “I...work very hard at what I do. To protect England, to protect my family. I failed Sherlock when he became involved in the debacle with Moriarty. The criminal took an interest in him I did not anticipate - and I should have. That’s why he’s now on this harebrained mission to dismantle Moriarty’s web. I worry for him. To place him on the plane, I had to take all my worries, all my fear, and lock it away in a chest.”

He lifts his head to me. “And now, I find myself having to do the same with you. I’d much rather lock you into the safehouse than bring you on this mission. Obviously, I know you wouldn’t take to that very well.”

“You’re goddamn right.” As nervy as I am over this, as much as I entertained the thought of diving into the ocean and swimming far away, I wouldn’t let anyone leave me out of this. 

Mycroft quirks a lip. “The chest where I lock all this away gets heavier all the time.”

I hold his hand for a moment longer, feeling the weight of it in mine. Think about his words. He’s weighted down. World-weary. In need of an outlet. “Then, maybe, it might be alright to let the chest open, and let it all out. Let someone in who can help you with the burden.”

“Hm,” he says. “A burden much like a Pandora’s box of evils.”

“But you forget. It wasn’t just evil.”

Mycroft smiles. His eyes lift up to the sky, where the stars have begun to sprout. “Hope.”

“Hope,” I reply.

“More people have arrived at the target.” Anthea. We turn to face her. She crouches in the doorway of the van, all dressed in black. We’ve all changed into tactical gear - black pants and pullovers, black boots and gloves. Bulletproof vests and kneepads. Despite the added weight on my frame, I’ve been ignoring it. Not ready to face it until we’re ready for the action.

“It’s time we moved into position,” she adds.

Music to my ears.

  
  



End file.
